If As We Try
by Eirian1
Summary: Donovan is missing. Has the pressure of being commander of an SOG unit, a husband, and new father finally got to him? And will the team sell out to protect their own lives?
1. Teaser

UC: Undercover 

  


If… As We Try - Prologue 

  


_Original Characters and story plot © E Phillips 2001. UC: Undercover premise and characters from the show are © Shane Salerno, NBC and associated companies. No copyright infringement intended.___

_Author's Note: While this is a sequel to "If… In the End, it is not strictly necessary to have read that story to understand or even follow it. This story is rated R for scenes of sex and violence and for the implied, underlying subject matter._   


"This is taking too damn long. What is going on? What's wrong?" The accent he had been trying for so long to be rid of infused his voice with a richness that was at once incredibly sensual and terrifyingly dangerous. 

"Ivan, relax. You worry too much." 

"Ivan!" he corrected, irritated, stretching out the vowel as a long 'ah' sound. "I've told you many, many times – I will begin to think you do it deliberately to annoy me." 

He squared up to the man, drawing himself up to his full height and the other man swallowed and backed up a step. 

"You do not want to do that, _my friend_." He knew the other man, Matt Russell, and his companions had witnessed his temper and had been astounded by it… shocked even, he surmised, because it had been a long time before any of them had dared to call him off. He had been forced to demonstrate early in their association that he was no push over, and that he was just as serious as they in their plans and schemes. 

"You still worry too much," said another member of the small group. 

Gareth Walsh was a terribly cruel man… especially with the girls run by the group leaders as "entertainment" for their business contacts. 

Ivan frowned as Gareth approached a particularly attractive one of those girls. She hadn't been with the group long… less time than he had as a matter of fact. He'd known from the beginning, from the moment he had laid eyes on her that she was terrified, young and, more interesting to him, inexperienced. He had immediately taken her for himself, guarding her jealously from the others, challenging any that even looked at her. Yet now, Gareth was sniffing round her as though she were in heat. 

"Hey!" he called out sharply, glaring at the man until he took his hand off her thigh. 

"Gyere ide," he instructed the girl and held out his hand to her. He knew she would understand. He had said it to her often enough that by now she would know to go to him when he barked those words. She looked fearfully between him and Gareth, but then complied. 

He closed his fingers round her wrist to draw her in to his side, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. He dipped his head to plant a kiss on the side of hers, beside her temple, his eyes never leaving Gareth's. She whimpered and he tightened his arm still further. 

"I thought I told you," he growled. "The girl is mine." 

Gareth held up his hand in surrender. "Hey man, just…" 

Ivan cut him off with another ice-cold stare. 

"She belongs… to me," he repeated and drew her in front of him, wrapping both arms across her chest. 

She made a small sound as he pulled her closer to underline his words and shuddered against him. He curled his fingers tighter around her shoulders, pushing aside a flash of remorse than ran through him. 

"If I decide I am bored with her company," the fingers of his right hand lifted away from her left shoulder to frame her face and pass a light caress through her hair, "I will let you know." 

Sensing the man was still a little resistant, he made the caress into a grip in her hair and pulled her head back until he could press a hot and obviously wet, possessive kiss against the side of her neck. 

"Jesus man, you don't need to prove it to us!" Gareth snapped and turned away. "It was just a bit of fun." 

Ivan would have answered, except that Greg, the fourth member of their team came racing back from his position, where they had left him to guard the exits and entrances of the club. 

"OUT," he yelled. "Out now… we were set up!" 

Instinctively, Ivan drew his weapon and flipped off the safety, once more shifting his grip on the girl, to hold her now hostage style, as the two others kicked down the door to the room where the meeting was taking place. They shouted almost in panic to their two bosses as the sounds of sirens became louder, bringing policed down on their position. 

"Who the hell…?" Ivan snapped. 

"Careless." 

He brought his gaze up to the leader of the operation, the suited man, ex-military, ex NSA, who met his furious glare with equal strength. 

_Ex nothing_, he thought. The man knew things that were fare too current to be 'ex.' either that or he had a man on the inside. 

"You have a problem, Ivan?" the man asked him, raising an eyebrow. 

"When I do," he answered in an uncompromising tone. "You'll be the first to know." 

He let go of the girl long enough to slide back the chamber housing, and prime the gun. 

"Right now, I suggest we leave." 

** 

She struggled in his arms, and jumped each time the gun went off or a shot impacted the car they hid behind. He held her close… he didn't want her getting hurt. He was sure she would have screamed except for the fact that he had his hand over her mouth. 

Deciding to make a run for his target, he half carried, half dragged her with him toward the back of a squad car. She would be safe there. It was a risk, but… 

"I need you to listen to me very carefully," he said, his voice almost, but not quite free of the accent and gentle – more gentle than before, but still firm. She met his eyes. Hers were tearful and confused. "I'm let…" 

"Hey, Ivan!" Matt yelled from the half opened doorway of their getaway vehicle. 

He sighed, and closed his eyes for a second, leaning against he cold metal of the squad car. 

"What the hell are you doing?" Greg joined Matt at the van door. 

"Leaving them a message," he answered quickly, the accent now returned. Raising his gun toward the girl's head he opened the rear door of the squad car. 

"We don't have _time_ for that," Matt snapped. "Come on!" 

Shifting his grip once more on the girl, he dragged her, dodging gunfire, toward the vehicle, throwing both the girl and himself into it as it began to move. 

** 

"And you want me to authorise what?" Bloom laced his fingers together, letting the photograph fall to the desktop. 

"Look," the commander of the taskforce said. "I have teams standing by, waiting on my word. We can finish this in less than ten. Face it Paul, the man's gone bad and we need to take him out, and shut his team down." 

"I don't know." The justice department boss shook his head and frowned. A year ago he would have been happy to shut down that particular SOG, but now… with their solve rate… and after flushing out top ranking criminal elements such as Quiller – a presidential aide that had been selling arms for God's sake – he was more than a little reluctant. "You don't know what you're asking." 

"Take… another look at the photograph." The commander nudged the glossy black and white print as he leaned over Bloom's desk. "In the middle of a gun battle, Paul…" 

He picked up the photo and lowered his eyes to the shiny surface. The eyes that stared back at him, dark and familiar, that often glared at him from just where the commander now stood, were full of hate and rage. The handsome face, mouth framed by a neatly trimmed goatee beard was contorted into a dangerous expression of murder, but the most disturbing point of all, the gun held to a girl's head. She couldn't have been more than seventeen years old. 

He sighed heavily, and closed his eyes. 

"Do it," he said softly. 

** 

A dull thud, followed by a terrifying scream made Saran sprint from the kitchen to the lounge where Alethea was playing with her toys in the playpen. 

She screamed herself – though not of fear – when she set eyes on the squad of black clad, armed men surging into her living room, rifles pointing in all directions at once. Her scream was one of protective denial to the officer that was even now, moving toward her child. 

"No!" she yelled. 

"Down on the ground!" instructions were repeated at her from several quarters. "Down on the ground now!" 

"You touch my daughter and I'll _kill_ you, you son-of-a- bitch!" She ignored all of the shouts, intent only on getting to her daughter before the officer did. The many months with Frank Donovan… as his wife, lent her the strength to act as she did. 

She didn't make it. Half way across the room she was grabbed by a member of the SWAT team and forced, somewhat more roughly than necessary to her knees, and then face down on the carpeted floor. 

"Let me go!" she fought like the proverbial tigress. A mother protective her cub as the man finally lifted Alethea from her playpen, and handed her to a woman she hadn't even noticed before, quite obviously a social worker. 

"Mamma!" Alethea screamed and reached out toward her, throwing herself almost rigid and straight backed against the social workers body. 

"You're scaring her!" she tried to get up, but the SWAT member had his knee in the small of her back. 

"Mamma!" 

"LET HER GO!" She struggled frantically, fighting with the officer that tried to cuff her as the woman started to carry her daughter away. 

"She'll be quite safe, Mrs Donovan," the team commander, the man that had first touched her daughter told her. "Co-operate with us, and it will just be a temporary measure." 

She met his eyes then, they were cold, and hard and calculating. 

** 

"Go through it again," Monica asked, as frustrated as the rest of the team, as they all started at the huge piece of paper in the middle of the table. 

It had been three months since Donovan had disappeared, and they were still no closer to finding him than they had been, and they had been more than busy with their current case load, and having no leader – refusing Bloom's offer of a temporary replacement… 

"I don't know what else I can say," snapped Cody, "than I haven't already said. He came in. He asked if I was okay. He gave me the tape and then he left." 

"Tape?" Jake asked. 

"Backup of his pc." Cody sighed. "And I've already checked it." 

He virtually threw up his hands, meeting her gaze before she could ask him the question that was at the tip of her tongue. 

"There's nothing there Monica," he said, "But a load of boring case reports and appointment calendars. I've checked hidden, read only… everything." 

She sighed. 

"There must be _something_ we can…" 

She was interrupted as the door exploded inward. And together with Jake, and Alex she drew her weapon as Cody went for the server keyboard and typed… "FDISK…" 

"Don't execute that command!" the voice rang out like a shot, followed by others instructing them to drop their weapons and get down on the ground. 

Monica smiled as she did as she was told, putting her gun slowly on the table top and lowering herself to her knees. The speed that Cody typed, he would have hit 'enter' even before the man had finished the word, "don't." 

"Ooops, too slow," Cody said, and was rewarded with a rifle butt in the small of his back that drove him, crying out, to his knees. 

"Hey!" Jake called out at the man who had done it, struggling slightly with the officer that was trying to cuff him. 

"What the hell is going on?" Alex asked as she was hauled to her feet. 

"Where are the backups?" A suited man crouched beside the still winded Cody and forced his head back. 

Monica winced as her arm was pulled roughly behind her back and she too was cuffed and pulled to her feet. This was brutality… 

"The safe," Cody gasped. 

He looked up and met her eyes and she saw his fear. She shook her head almost imperceptibly in his direction, trying to tell him he'd be okay. The man nodded to another of the officers, and they set about blowing the safe. 

"I asked someone a question," Alex repeated, drawing Monica's gaze away from Cody as she did. "What's going on?" 

"As of thirty minutes ago," The suited man turned his attention in her direction, pausing only to allow the sound of the plastic blowing the safe door off its hinges to die away. "This unit is shut down." 

"What!" Jake interrupted. 

"You'll all be debriefed, and if appropriate, reassigned," he continued. "But that will be a matter for the discretion of OPR." 

"What the hell does this have to do with OPR?" Monica found her voice again, still trying to crane her neck to check that Cody was okay. 

"You're boss has lost it," Sneered one of the SWAT team. "Gone bad…" 

"Fuck you!" Jake snapped in disbelief. 

"Excuse me?" Monica ignored the outburst and addressed the man in the suit. 

"I'm sorry Agent Davis," he said. "But we do have very good reason to believe that Frank Donovan is… no longer the man that you all believe him to be. And we expect your full cooperation in getting to the bottom of this." 

"To stitch him up, you mean," Cody said quietly, but his voice was heard and he received another numbing blow to the small of his back. He hissed in pain, losing all of his breath, and if he hadn't been held up, Monica was sure that he would have fallen again. 

"Fuck!" he hissed as he regained the capacity for speech and breathing. She blinked in shock. It was, she thought, the first time she'd heard him say anything harsher than "damn."   



	2. Act 1

If… As We Try – Act 1

  
  


_What do you expect me to say? After that first night, when we found each other again…after we discovered that the love and desire was still there and strong enough to heal the pain of those lost months between us it was almost as though we had never been apart.___

_I left him to sleep with his daughter in his arms, only covering the two of them with a blanket because they looked so peaceful that I didn't want to disturb them. But I woke in the morning held in his arms, with our little bundle between us. My eyes fluttered open and I fell into the warm coffee-brown of his smiling eyes.___

_"We were lonely," he murmured softly, leaning over to kiss me gently. "Good Morning."___

_"Frank," I whispered, still not quite believing I had woken. I reached up to run my fingers over his face wanting to feel every inch of the beautiful mirage I saw on waking.___

_He closed his eyes, sighing softly as I mapped his forehead, his nose and cheeks. Then I jumped as his fingers closed around my wrist.___

_"Not," he said softly drawing a finger into his mouth and running his tongue suggestively around it. His voice teased as he eased the intimate touch away, to plant a line of kisses over my palm and the inside of my wrist. "In front… of the children."___

_I moaned softly, and then he chuckled and playfully slapped my rump.___

_"Come on, baby, get up."___

_"Hmm?"___

_"We have to go," he said.___

_"Where?"___

_"You know," he got up and picked up Alethea from where she still lay gurgling between us. "I don't remember your mom asking so many questions before."___

_He walked from the bedroom, and as I got up, I peeped out at him, heading for the nursery with his daughter.___

_Watching him that morning, there was no way anyone could have said that he was anything but a good father._

** 

**UC OPS VAN: 9.45pm Feb 8th**   


Jake shifted uncomfortably as he watched the feed coming from inside the warehouse. He was expected… was overdue in fact and would need to think on his feet to excuse his lateness. 

"I still don't like it," Donovan said and Jake watched as he twisted the ring on his finger. "I'm not happy letting you go in there, but it's your call, Jake." 

"And you know we're with you, right?" Cody added, turning from the computer screen to look at the other two men. 

"If I don't show in there it will have made the last six week worthless," he looked over at the screen again, to where the leader of the band he'd infiltrated pulled a gun and checked the clip. "He's getting twitchy, Donovan I gotta go. I gotta go now." 

He started toward the door of the ops van. 

"Hey," Donovan stopped him. "Vest." 

He shook his head. "You can't hide something like that from Fontanez. I go in there wearing a vest and they're going to know there's something going down." 

Donovan growled and shook his head. "Damn it Jake…" 

"He'll be okay," Alex pressed a touch against Donovan's arm. "Like you said, it's his call." 

Jake looked up at his boss and nodded. "Just be ready, huh?" 

He met Donovan's eyes; an intense stare that spoke of every reasonable objection he could possibly have made to the decision and a few unreasonable ones besides… but also the understanding that he knew Jake was right; that he knew his mark well. 

Eventually Donovan nodded. His blink released Jake from their kindred grasp. 

** 

He turned to watch the monitor as Jake made his way toward the warehouse door. Every sense was screaming danger at him. Something didn't feel right and he didn't know what it was, but something felt wrong – out of place. 

"Give Jake an SC," he leaned down, one arm on the back of Cody's seat, the other resting on the desk, as if shutting out everything else but the system check he'd just asked for. 

Cody nodded. "Jake, you getting this? Talk to me." 

"Do you always have to shout?" Jake's voice came back clear as crystal over the speaker. So it wasn't that. He shook his head with a sigh and straightened up. If it wasn't that then it was something inside and that would mean they would need to act fast. 

We walked over to the other side of the van and picked up a vest which he tossed to Alex, taking another for himself, he put it on. 

"What's wrong?" she asked him. 

"Something's not right," he answered. "I'd feel better if we were ready to go." 

She shrugged and put on the vest, accepting his reasoning without a second thought. It was something that was giving him greater and greater comfort – they were a team now and they trusted each other like family. 

"Whoa!" Cody's started exclamation made him swing round to fix his eyes on the monitor. Everyone had. He tensed. 

Fontanez had Jake on the end of a gun, just inside the doorway. Jake stood with his arms spread to the sides, but they couldn't see his hands. His hands that would give them the signal if he needed back up. Even without asking Cody was flicking between cameras. None showed a clear view… it was almost as if they knew. 

"Nada," Cody sighed. "Sorry Donovan." 

"I'm going out," he started toward the door. The gut feeling he was having… their well placed eyes that were supposed to have been watching Jakes back failing… it was too much. 

"Usted es atrasado!" the voice came through the speakers. It was cold and hard. 

"Donovan, wait… wait!" Alex urged him and snapped her fingers at Cody for a headset. He stopped with his hand on the door handle and watched as she quickly put on the headset. 

"Desde entonces cuando era que un crimen, mi amigo?" she said quietly into the headset, the answer that the cover they'd created for Jake would have given. He repeated it flawlessly… almost vehemently. 

_Fontanez laughed, and put up the gun.___

_"Where were you, Jake?" he asked, his voice full of accent. "I was beginning to worry."___

_"A woman," Jake said, the suggestive tone in his voice bringing an even wider smile to Fontanez's face. "Tengo gusto de tomar mi tiempo."___

_Cody looked over at Alex with a sour expression. "I like to take my time?"_

He moved behind them, to watch what was happening since Alex and Jake had defused the immediate situation. The feeling had not gone away though; it gnawed at him, making him jumpy. 

"Guys… guys…!" Monica pointed to another screen that showed the outside of the warehouse, where a car was pulling up. The men that got out of the car had more weapons than the situation demanded. 

"Ow!" 

"Damn it!" Both Alex and Cody ripped off their headsets, and a high pitched howl came from the speakers before Cody quickly typed at the keyboard and hit the enter key. 

"Okay, now we're screwed," Cody said, his conversational tone belying the seriousness of his words. 

"Talk to me, Cody." he leaned down again. "What just happened?" 

"We… lost the signal," he shrugged. "Either someone out there knows we're here or…" 

"Or?" Donovan sighed; they didn't have time for guessing games. 

"Or there's someone else out there using the same frequency." Cody said slowly. 

The implications of that statement hit no one in the van harder than they did Donovan. Same frequency meant the same agency… same agency meant that someone, somewhere decided his team was not enough… that somehow they didn't trust him to get a result. 

"That's it," he snapped. "Alex, Monica…" 

"If you go in now, there's no way we can let Jake know." Cody reminded him. 

"We have no choice." He pulled out his gun and pulled back the slide. "Let's go." 

** 

**ABANDONED WAREHOUSE, SOUTH SIDE DOCKS: 10.18pm**

"So where are they?" Jake looked around and saw only their own men in the warehouse. He was already late so there should have been others. The rival operators with whom they were making a deal should have been there. 

"Late, like you, mi amigo." Fontanez said. "Perhaps they have women too, uh?" 

Jake smiled, but he was feeling uncomfortable. The comforting background sound of the team in his ear had stopped and normally if they were shutting him down for a reason they'd tell him first. Cody was like that. He was far too professional to just cut him off without warning. 

"I don't like this." He voiced the next through that went through his head. 

"Now you know what it was like for me," Fontanez said and Jake didn't like the tone. He cursed inwardly. He had allowed himself to be lulled into the illusion of safety. 

Both men jumped as the cargo door of the warehouse rolled upward. Guns swung their way and they were just too slow in responding. A shot rang out and the man beside him fell to the floor. 

"What is this?" roared Fontanez over the barrel of his gun. 

"You set us up, Fontanez…" his opposite stepped over the threshold of the warehouse, his eyes shining with an expression that Jake thought was close to hate and he realised that… even without the takedown planned… this would not have ended without a fight. 

Right at that moment though it was a standoff with each group eyeing the other over drawn weapons. He suddenly found himself wishing he'd taken Donovan's advice and worn the vest. 

"What are you talking about?" Fontanez hissed. 

"Last night… the casino…" 

"Hey I had nothing to do with that…" 

The blur of a dark shape to the side drew Jake's attention away from the argument in front of him. He fell back a step his free hand slipping into his pocket to close reassuringly around his badge even as he started to look for cover. Why hadn't they told him? He shook his head as though he could make the tiny earpiece that was nestled inside his ear suddenly start working again. 

The screech of tyres on asphalt became the only warning as the three fleet cars came spinning into view and spilled their armoured officers into the space outside. In the same moment the side door burst inward. 

"Federal agent!" Donovan's voice split the air, adding to the noise of the sudden panic as the criminal in front of Jake turned every way to try and escape the sudden enclosure. Jake pulled his hand from his pocket and held it up showing his badge. This might not be such a bad ending after all. 

"Federal agent," he echoed his bosses call. "Everybody down on the ground, down on the ground now." 

But then one of Fontanez's men remembered he had a gun. 

** 

He ducked back behind the doorframe as the weapon came up in his direction and the gunfire started, praying that Jake had the good sense to find cover. He had to get into the warehouse. 

A lull in the chips of wood flying close by his ear lent him the moment he needed and firing a volley of his own he rolled around the door and raced toward a nearby stack of pallets. 

Coming round them he found himself face to face with a blonde haired man pointing a .33 in his direction. He had the slightly better angle, his weapon was pointing at the smaller man's head. 

"Put it down," he commanded. 

"Federal agent," the other man's answer, and the flash of a badge momentarily caught Donovan by surprise, even though he'd known the possibility was there. He reached out and snatched the badge from the officer's hand, trying to shut out the quieting sounds of the fight. 

He had almost no time to examine it as a frantic cry that made his heart pause in beating stole his attention. 

"Jake!" 

** 

It was a mess. 

Criminal and officer alike lay scattered on the ground. The scent of gunfire and of blood pulled at her gut, fighting for expression. It had been a long time since she'd felt that. She's thought she was over it. _Maybe you never get over it._

Cautiously, she advanced into the warehouse, covering herself ever step of the way, the sounds of gunfire fading as the remaining officers chased down fleeing criminals, but she wasn't clear. She felt that. Two more steps and… 

"Alex, look out!" 

She saw Jake in the second before she heard his warning, raising his gun and she spun round, quick to centre her own on one of the two approaching criminals… huge men with murder written on their faces. A shot rang out and the man she chose to target fell to the ground. She had no time, either to curse or to bring her weapon to bear on the second target before the stinging blow of a hand caught her across the face and she stumbled. 

An arm wrapped around her waist and another on her hand, trying to get her gun from her. They twisted and fought. He was good. He was strong and it was as though he knew what she was going to do. Everything she tried, he countered. 

"Let her go," Jakes voice again, closer this time. 

The arm around her waist squeezed suddenly, winding her and momentarily stealing the strength that let her resist the pulling against her right hand, holding the gun. She felt a finger pushing against hers as they swung around, and the weapon in her grasp answered with a positive kick. 

Time stretched as her horror blossomed like some sick orchid through her body. Her hand opened reflexively and the gun dropped to clatter at her feet, mirroring the movement of the man… her partner… as he crumpled to the ground. 

"Jake!" she screamed, struggling desperately with the man that stopped her from helping her friend. 

"Alex…" 

Recognising the sound of her name she instinctively turned toward it. There was the sound of a gunshot and she felt the bullet as it passed, hot, only millimetres from her ear. The man holding her staggered and let go, and without waiting see what had happened she flew across the remaining ground between her and Jake. 

** 

_Change? No… there was no change. Not then. He was the same man I'd come to know and love.___

_"It's not even open yet," I laughed as we walked hand in hand down toward the bank. "Or did you want the ATM because that's around the other side of the…"___

_He stopped walking and tugged on my hand so that I turned to face him just outside the door. We made a triangle, the three of us… Frank and I holding onto the buggy and facing each other as Alethea gurgled up at us.___

_"What I want is to finish what we started… if that's what you want." His voice made me smile… that soft authority that had cracked the resolve of many a hostage taker.___

_"You're not at work now you know," I chuckled, but as I looked up at him my stomach was churning with excited need.___

_He smiled and let go of my hand to reach into his jacket pocket, pulling out a small velvet box which he handed to me.___

_"No I'm not," he said softly as he pulled open the lid. "For once I've managed to escape that and you're the only one that can do that for me… the only one I would ever want to do that. Saran will you still marry me?"___

_I didn't even look down at the ring that I knew was in the box we held between us. It's not the sort of thing you do when you have Frank Donovan in front of you, opening his heart in his own quiet way… revealing his insecurities to you… and yes, he does have then.___

_I smiled, my eyes filled with tears and I whispered that I would, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life helping him to escape that… and a million other clichés all of which I can't recall, because the next moment of my life was the one I think I'll remember for ever.___

_It didn't matter that we were in the middle of the sidewalk, or that the City of Chicago was coming to life around us. He came to his knees in front of me, wrapped his arms around my waist, laid his head against me and sobbed like a child. It's not until moments like that, when he does something unexpected… and it doesn't even have to be something as obvious as that was, sometimes it can be the little things… that you come to realise just how much Frank cares._

** 

**NORTHWEST MEMORIAL HOSPITAL: 3.06am**

Alex was still shaking… probably still in shock. Monica squeezed her arm reassuringly and caressed her back. Not every day you shot your partner and friend. She needed to get her talking, but felt that anything she said would be pointless, would just make it worse for Alex, but the woman hadn't said a word since they brought her in with Jake and that was a bad thing… it didn't take a degree in criminal psychology for her to know that. 

A light touch settled on her shoulder, and the scent of coffee insinuated its way into her tired senses. She looked up at Donovan who was holding out a plastic cup in her direction. 

"Thanks," she said, her own voice barely disturbing the silence. "How's he doing?" 

Donovan nodded. "He's going to be okay." 

She squeezed Alex's arm again then let go to take the coffee from Donovan's hand, and take a sip. It was from a machine, it was bitter and didn't quite have enough sugar, but none of that mattered. It was something normal… reassuring. 

"How is _she_ doing?" he asked nodding toward Alex. She pulled a face that should have told him all he needed to know, but shook her head just to make sure. 

"Alex?" he called to her softly. Under her hand she felt Alex stiffen, but the woman made no attempt to acknowledge Donovan's presence, not even when he held out the second cup of coffee he carried right in front of her face. 

"I need you to listen to me Alex," he crouched down in front of her then, his elbows just touching her knees. Monica watched, silently… watching the tiniest flicker of emotion that was passing through his eyes… continuing what she had once started out of necessity and adjusting the profile she had in her head on the man that she called both boss and friend. 

"What so you can give me empty assurances that it wasn't my fault?" Alex asked at last, still not looking up at him. She was a stubborn bitch; Monica had to give her that. 

"Hey," Donovan raised his voice just slightly above the gentle register, the slightest of edges to it. When she still didn't look up at him, he reached out to lift her chin on the tips of his fingers. "You know me better than that. It wasn't your fault and he's going to be fine." 

"It was my… gun, Donovan," she said, having no choice but to look at him. "It was my fault." 

"Jake should have been wearing a vest." 

"So what… it's his fault now?" Alex snapped. 

"It was an accident, Alex, and accidents happen. But he made his choice, yes. He chose not to wear a vest… he chose to warn you about a potential threat to your life. It was a matter of choices," he argued. "But this choice you're making now, to blame yourself, it's wrong and Jake wouldn't want that. We got a result tonight. It wasn't perfect; in fact if the truth be known it was a total mess, but it was a result. Don't lessen that – don't let them win by taking this on yourself Alex." 

Monica breathed out the breath she had been holding and filed away another facet of the man. He looked up at her and raised an eyebrow in query at the sound she made. It must have sounded like a sigh. She shook her head and he immediately turned her attention back to Alex. 

"Now take the coffee," he removed the touch of his hand from Alex's face. "Pull yourself together and go on up. Jake's asking for you." 

** 

He'd barely switched on his phone again as he exited the hospital when it rang. He frowned as he looked at the display and saw the number. 

"Donovan." 

"Do you really care about your team, Frank or are you just protecting an investment?" The voice on the other end of the phone was familiar and mocking. 

"I thought I told you to stay the hell out of my life," he said, tiredness and irritability framing the answer he gave. 

"You did." The voice came back at once. "But as I said I can't." 

"Won't," he corrected. 

"All right then won't." The answer was easy, almost friendly, but he knew otherwise. "We have a hole…" 

"Not my problem." Donovan cut him off. 

"It is _everybody's_ problem." The tone in his caller's voice made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. 

"Not mine." Something, some feeling made him start looking round the parking lot. He saw nothing but the dim shadows cast by the security lamps. Tired sarcasm infused his voice. "You should try the NSA, I can give you their number if you'd like." 

"I have their number." 

"Then you have your solution." He hung up before his caller could give the answer he usually did. 

** 

**OFFICE OF PAUL BLOOM: 9.44am Feb 19th**

"No, what I'm telling you is that I don't believe the bullshit you've been feeding me these last ten days." He leaned forward onto the desk and fixed the Justice Department Head with a bitter stare. 

"So you come barging into my office…" 

"Tell me which SOG Command. Who is their leader." He interrupted Bloom before the irritating little weasel could get into full swing. 

"I can't do that Frank, you know that." 

"All right then what agency?" He sighed, trying to control his rising temper. "Was it Federal or did it go beyond that." 

"Donovan, you know you're asking questions that I can't answer…" 

"Four officers died, two civilian security guards were hurt and one of my agents is lying in a hospital bed because you can't answer those questions," he snapped. "Questions I shouldn't even have to ask." 

"It was an accident," Bloom answered. "I didn't know about it until it was too late." 

"It's never too late." He pointed at his supposed superior in barely controlled anger. "I should have been told about the second UC operation." 

"What so you could get precious about jurisdiction?" Bloom leaned back in his chair and folder his arms. "Face it Frank you're sore because…" 

"Oh spare me!" His temper finally gave under the onslaught. "You honestly think I care about that. What I care about is why I wasn't trusted to get the result. You knew about that operation and you didn't tell me and in not telling me in endangered innocent lives." 

"Don't be so melodramatic…" 

"Now I'm asking you again. What agency, what command?" 

"What difference would it make, you knowing that now?" Bloom stood up and came round the desk to stand as squarely as he could against Frank. "You have a problem with the way I run things, you can always quit." 

"That would be really convenient for you wouldn't it?" Donovan asked, looking down on the smaller man, narrowing his eyes. "You don't like the fact that someone somewhere reversed your decision to shut the unit down when Keller died, and brought me in to lead it. And you don't like the fact that you can't justify shutting us down now because of our solve rate." 

"You are SO wrong, Donovan," Bloom laughed, but there was a hint of nervousness underneath the apparent confidence that he didn't miss. 

"You ever do anything like this again, endanger my team or one of my operations and I will _shut you down_ Bloom, and you _know_ I can do that," he warned. "All it takes is one phone call." 

He turned and started toward the door. 

"You wouldn't dar…" 

"I don't bluff, Paul," he threw over his shoulder. "You know that… you read my file." 

** 

_"Welcome home, Missus Donovan," he breathed as our kiss ended and he finally put me down. I giggled like a schoolgirl. I couldn't help it. It was the way I felt. All right, so we only had the weekend for our "honeymoon." By mutual agreement we'd decided just to shut ourselves away together at home while my mother looked after Alethea, but none of that mattered. We were finally both where we wanted to be.___

_After everything we'd both been through… after all the things we'd suffered both together and separately… we had emerged healed and whole… well almost.___

_I felt almost shy as I looked up to find him watching me, and I took his hand to lead him upstairs. His eyes were already undressing me, but once we reached the bedroom his hands joined in, dancing over each zipper, each button, each clip until I was naked before him… and then he just stood and looked, love and hungry desire fighting for expression in his eyes.___

_"God, you're beautiful." He breathed in deeply as I reached for him.___

_"And you are overdressed," I teased. I was only teasing because I was… I don't know why, but strangely embarrassed. It's not like he'd never seen me before. He had… many times. We had a child together, but… standing there, naked and open to his gaze it was too much… too intense.___

_He wrapped his arms around me as I undressed him, his fingers walking spiralling caresses over my spine and making me almost forget myself. When he called my name I looked up at him, to have him capture my lips in a heated and desperate kiss. His tongue filled my mouth almost before I registered that he was kissing me at all and everything I felt suddenly gathered low in my belly, where he was trapped, already hard between the soft skin of the both of us.___

_We fell onto the bed together and with hardly a moment to catch my breath from the kiss he buried himself deep inside me. My moan was neither soft nor gentle, but matched the hunger with which he possessed my body. Moving back onto the bed more fully, I wrapped my legs around his hips to keep him inside me, to stop him from moving and taking me there too quickly. I squeezed my muscles around him until he too voiced the passion that had driven us both to that point.___

_But he was never one to give up without a fight, and what a delicious fight it was. It was hot and heavy and heady. He ran his fingers down the back of my thighs until he reached my ankles, until he could grasp my legs and bring them higher, sinking further and more fully inside me, his movements fast and deep and powerful.___

_His fingers caressed the entire surface of my body, teasing my nipples, dipping down between the point of our joining to touch that other nub in firm caresses as he glided against and into my flesh, a rhythm of possession and abandonment___

_We were soon both gasping light cries for each other, as he filled me with the liquid heat of his love and I shattered around him, drawing him down to cradle him against me in the aftermath of our sweet battle. My lips found his and drank as deeply of the sweetness of him mouth as I did his essence.___

_I don't recall him leaving the soft haven that my body afforded him, but I suppose he must have, because as we both lay, gently caressing each other, learning each other's form and feeling, he stirred into life again beneath the touch of my hand. I always did love that feeling… the feel of him strengthening, and the pulsing against my touch to the rhythm of his heartbeat.___

_But this time he took my hand away and softly kissed my fingers.___

_"There are things I need to tell you Saran… that I want you to know." He didn't stop touching me, not once, always gentle, always patient as he confessed ever single sordid moment of his past – the joys and the heartaches that had brought us to that moment – he laid bare before me, and far from push me away, it made me love him all the more. So you see there is nothing anyone can tell me about Frank Donovan, my husband, that I don't already know. I probably know him better than I know myself.___

_And he weeps… did you know that?___

_Strong men like Frank will often tell you that they don't, not ever… but he does. There are things in his past of which he's so ashamed he almost couldn't speak of them, but he did, through tears, through sobs sometimes – but he still told me and still I love him…___

_Why?___

_Because if you back him into a corner then he will, without exception, come out fighting, but even though that's true, he still knows the difference between right and wrong._

** 

**DIAGATO COFFEE HOUSE: 10.54am Feb 22nd**

"All right, Leggett," Donovan slid into the booth opposite his former colleague. "You have as long as it takes for me to get a cup of coffee. And only then because you're leaning on a member of my team." 

"Well you won't take my calls, you won't answer my Email," Leggett answered exaggerating the sarcasm. "What do you expect?" 

"You don't deny it then?" he said. 

"What would be the point in that?" Leggett asked. "You already know we are so…" 

"Coffee, black," Donovan ordered without looking up as the waitress came to his side. He stabbed his finger down on the table in front of the other man as he next spoke. "I agreed to the meeting, now you pull the heat off Agent Cross. What happened was an accident." 

"Agreed." Leggett shrugged. After a long pause he said quietly. "As I said on the phone, we have a hole. A particularly nasty and dangerous one." 

"And as _I_ told _you_ that's your problem." Frank countered. "I don't _do_ that kind of thing any more." 

"You do this kind of thing every day of your life," the other man corrected him, but Frank shook his head. 

"My team go under. I just watch their back." He thanked the waitress quietly as she brought him his coffee, and took a sip before he continued. "But you already know that." 

"National… security… Frank." Leggett said slowly. 

"You…" Donovan put down his cup. "You once told me that you can take care of your own problems, so go talk to the NSA and leave me out of this." 

"I can't _do_ that… this _involves_ the NSA." The man put a package down on the table beside Donovan's hand. "Someone on the inside." 

"If you know who, then make an arrest," he said and eyed the package as though it contained a bomb or a poisonous snake. 

"We only have the evidence to identify the men working under him, and then scant enough of that." 

Donovan shrugged and repeated, "Not my problem." 

"You are the _only_ one that can do this Frank. You know why." Donovan stiffened as Leggett pushed buttons he would have been better to leave alone. He picked up the coffee cup and drained it dry. 

"Meeting over," said coldly and started to get up. 

"Please…" 

Frank paused. "Let me take it to me team and…" 

"The minute you involve anyone else in this, you blow the whole thing. Particularly if it's your team." 

"Why?" he demanded. 

"Because if you involve the team then Bloom gets to know about it." Leggett said. "He's out for your blood, Frank and working for another agency would give him the excuse he needs to close you down and split you up." 

"Well then you're on your own, because I'm doing nothing without them." He slipped out of the booth and started to put on his overcoat against the rain that was now falling in sheets. 

"You know it was Bloom that sent in that second team to try and catch you out. To make you look back and screw up your…" 

"Bloom's not intelligent enough for that." Donovan leaned right down into Leggett's face, locking the other man's eyes with an uncompromising stare and added dangerously, "Not by a long way." 

The implication was obvious. He didn't trust Leggett… he knew he was being used by all sides and the only people he could trust were the ones close to him, and had nothing to hold over him. 

"At least watch the tape." Leggett said, nudging the package against his hand. 

** 

_The first time he had to go away on a case after we were married was hard. I cried myself to sleep the first night because I missed him so much even though he called ever day at least once.___

_I know it sounds silly but I think Alethea missed him too. She would sit in her chair in the kitchen at meal times looking at the door, because he would more often than not arrive home in the middle of a meal.___

_But all the time I knew I shouldn't complain because I knew about his job before we even got serious. He never kept anything from me and I knew there would be times when he had to go away. But knowing doesn't make it any easier, in fact as time went on it started to make it harder… or so I thought…___

_At least he always told me, face to face, he never just disappeared. I got to the point where I could tell before he told me, if he had to go out of town… or worse, out of state.___

_He walked through the door, filthy, exhausted… still wearing his vest and pulled me into his arms. His kiss was soft… hesitant…almost little more than a brush against my lips before he settled against me and drew my lower lip between his own. I wound my fingers into his cropped hair and kissed him deeply… my tongue stroking against his until he turned his head to take control of the kiss. We kissed until we were both breathless. Then he leaned his head against mine.___

_"You have to go away, don't you?" I asked softly. He nodded, moving his head against mine, too tired to speak. "Tonight?"___

_"Tomorrow," he whispered against my cheek.___

_My fingers started pulling at the buckles on the vest to unfasten it and peel it from him, bringing him home.___

_"Why don't you go and get a shower and I'll bring you up some dinner and help you with the packing," I suggested as the next of our kisses ended. It was almost a personal ritual. A shower to wash away the filth of the latest case… dinner in the bedroom and maybe a little love play if he wasn't… as then… too tired. Oh he'd try though, even on nights like that… but I knew how exhausted he was. You could see it in his eyes – if you knew what to look for.___

_"Okay," he breathed and let go, reluctantly, I knew, because of the way his fingers lingered on my waist.___

_He was already lying on the bed in just his robe, almost asleep when I brought up the dinner and fruit juice. He opened his eyes as I sat down and smiled softly.___

_"Saran, I'm sorry." He always said that and I always told him he was silly to be sorry, that it was his job. I sat beside him and started to run my fingers through his hair until he relaxed. He seemed tense still… normally after a shower… the heat of the water and all that… "I don't know how long we'll be this time. It's likely to be a tough case."___

_I smiled, trying not to panic at that, but he saw the panic anyway and closed his arms around me. The meal forgotten in the need to comfort me. He cupped my face between his hands and started to plant light kisses over my face and neck… over my shoulders as far as my clothes would allow and in return I ran my hands over his body, lingering over his chest and shoulders, where I could still feel the scars I'd caused. He closed his eyes as thought he knew what I was thinking.___

_"I promise you I will always wear a vest," he whispered. "I'm coming home."___

_"I know," I whispered in return… but it was my own biggest fear… that one day he would over-reach himself… or that the vest wouldn't be enough and I would end up losing him. "Come on, my love, you need to eat."___

_I pulled the tray closer so that he could reach the food and gave him a stern look until he started eating. Only then did I start moving around the bedroom, packing his bag for him and feeling his eyes on me as I did. I tried not to look.___

_"Come to bed…" I jumped as he crept up behind me and encircled my waist with his arms.___

_"I thought you were tired."___

_"I am, but I just want to hold you. Need to hold you…Please…"___

_Smiling, I undressed and came to slip into bed with him… gathering him against me… laying his head onto my breast so that he could hear the way my heart was beating. I stroked his hair, his back, his neck. We both of us fell asleep like that and I was barely awake in the morning when he kissed me goodbye and whispered softly.___

_"I have to go… I love you. I'll be back as soon as I can."___

_"Call me," I murmured.___

_"Every day, I promise," he said. "I have to go."___

_I hated those words. I always have and I always will do, but at least he told me. He ALWAYS told me._

** 

**UC CRIB: 10.03am Feb 24th**

Cody looked up at the others as Donovan's cell phone started ringing. Everyone sat up and looked expectantly toward him. He almost hesitated, but Donovan was over an hour late and that was something that never happened. He quickly typed a number of keystrokes and then picked up the headset… everything already connected to his computer. 

"Donovan's phone," he answered. 

"Cody, hi…" the woman's voice was soft and even without a VSA he could tell that she was on the verge of tears. 

"Missus Donovan," he said cheerfully. "Did he forget something?" 

When she burst into tears on the other end of the line he snapped his fingers at that others who were all hovering, waiting to see who it was. Monica and Jake started for the door and Alex picked up the other headset. 

"Saran, it Alex, hey…" 

"Where is he?" Saran's words were muffled through sobs. "Please tell me what happened to him…" 

"Try and calm down," Alex said gently, "Monica and Jake are on their way. The truth is… we were hoping you could tell us." 

"What? Why…?" Saran sobbed. 

"He didn't show up for work this morning." Alex said. Cody sighed as the news sent Saran into a renewed fit of tears. 

"He didn't come home last night…" 

** 

**RESIDENCE SARAN AND FRANK DONOVAN: 10.40am Feb 24th**

"You absolutely sure of that," Monica asked gently, stroking Saran's back. Saran nodded and wiped her nose on the tissue she held. "You're sure he didn't just get in late and leave before you woke up?" 

It was a long shot, and she knew even as she asked the question that it was a futile one. When a couple had the kind of connection that Saran and Frank had, they knew when the other was there, even if not fully conscious of it. 

"Positive," Saran confirmed. "I'd know." 

"And yesterday morning was the last time you saw him?" Jake asked gently. 

"Yes." Saran looked up at him. "Holding Thea, and talking about getting a puppy." 

"You didn't…" Monica hesitated. "You didn't fight?" 

Saran shook her head. "We don't… He was fine. He was normal. Something's happened to him hasn't it?" 

"We don't know that." Monica said firmly. "Cody's checking all the hospital admittances, and if he'd found anything he would have told us." 

"Then where is he?" Saran practically yelled at her. 

** 

**UC CRIB: 11.01am Feb 24th**

He sighed and typed another series of keystrokes, waiting for the few short minutes before the computer beeped and announced. 

"No match found." 

In almost desperation he typed in "Don* F." and hit the search for the FBI's HMO computer. The computer displayed the familiar hourglass turning top to bottom before bleeping the announcement, bringing up a full list of all the agent in the FBI that matched the search string. He quickly found Donovan's entry and clicked on it. 

"NRA," the search came back _No Recent Activity._

"Well at least we know he's not in a hospital somewhere," he said, making Alex look over at him. "That's good right?" 

"Might just mean he's not been identified," she voiced his thought. 

"Why… we are cheerful today," he said sarcastically. "Bank search turn up anything." 

"Nope," she said. "No deposits or withdrawals, no ATM transactions, no credit card activity… nothing since three days ago." 

"Airlines?" 

"Would have showed up on his credit card, surely." Alex frowned, and he saw her look down at the paper again. She shook her head sadly. 

"This is ridiculous. He can't just have disappeared." The frustration in his voice was hiding the very real fear that the place they were going to turn up a result was the one place they really didn't want to. He sighed and met Alex's eyes. 

"Do it, Cody," she said quietly. 

Swinging slowly round in his chair to face the computer again, he deliberately keyed in the code that would patch him through to the coroner's computer system and typed in "Donovan, Frank." 

Both of them held their breath while the computer blinked at them "working, please wait…" 

** 

_I didn't think it was anything unusual… you see sometimes after he's had a heavy day he comes home in that mood… needy and insecure.___

_He was late and I was already in bed when he got home. As often happened at times like that he came up quietly, and first went in to check on Thea, before coming to bed, stripping silently and sliding in to wrap himself around me.___

_I moaned softly as he snuggled in behind me. Spooning up close he planted a warm kiss against the side of my neck.___

_"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't mean to wake you."___

_"You didn't." I turned in his arms and met the kiss I knew would be waiting for me. It was soft, and hot and deep. He tasted of coffee.___

_"I've missed you today," he murmured, breaking the kiss and winding his fingers into my hair, to pull my head away from his shoulder and to devour my neck with his lips and teeth and tongue. "I love you."___

_"I love you too, Frank… what's wrong?" I always asked, even though he rarely told me and then he shook his head.___

_"I need you that's all," he said.___

_"Tough day?" I pressed softly and was rewarded with a nod of confirmation. I wish I'd listened to my instinct that told me it was more than just that.___

_His fingers skimmed along my back, down my spine, pressing me closer to him so that I could feel him waking to life as he loved my body with his mouth. I couldn't resist touching and kissing in return. I loved the lazy way he did that… and my kisses became more passionate as his hands found my breasts and teased my already hardened nipples.___

_He moaned softly beneath me, his hands falling back against the sheets as I began to wash away his trouble with those soft kisses, moving my lips over his neck and his chest, spending time teasing his own nipples with my teeth and tongue, caressing the length of him with my centre but never once letting him capture me enough to sink inside. He moaned again, my name, as I moved my heat away from him as my kisses moved over his stomach and lower still, to take him in my mouth and taste the musk of his desire for me… the need to be closer.___

_His hands cupped around my head, though not to hold me in place or guide my movements – he knew I hated that, but simply to touch, to let my hair run through his fingers, and to tease my shoulders and my neck. I could have taken it to its natural conclusion. I wanted to, but his insistent tug eased my mouth away from his risen heat and brought my lips back to his.___

_"No," he whispered before he kissed me. "I want to be inside you when I come."___

_His words dragged another soft moan from me. He was normally so restrained – rarely vocal but always demonstrative about what he wanted in sex – that to hear him say it made me tremble with the need to share that moment, to give him what he wanted.___

_His lips descended over mine as he pushed me back against the bed, captured them and massaged them with his own and with the hot pass of his tongue across my lips, and when I opened to him, still cupping my face in his hands as he was, he pressed that sweeping softness into my mouth to fill me with the taste of his desire.___

_"God, Frank," I breathed as out lips parted. It had been a long while since he kissed me like that.___

_"I'm here Saran," he answered. "Tell me what you want."___

_"I want you," I said.___

_"You have me," he kissed me again. "Always."___

_"I want you inside me."___

_He didn't answer, not verbally anyway, but rose over me as I opened my body to him with the parting of my thighs. He drank my whispered moan into his mouth as he filled me, thrusting inside in a single undulating moment, that I met with the raising of my hips. We had to break the kiss then, it was too much to be joined in a circle like that, and both of us gasped softly as we became one.___

_Then moving he began to caress my neck with his lips, his beard grazing the soft skin and making it tender, alive to the touch of his tongue and the heat of his kisses. I nipped at the soft flesh behind his ear, where I knew his was sensitive and then turned my head to draw the lobe of his ear into my mouth and to love it with my tongue.___

_We were like the sea and the shore, our bodies worshiping each other… inseparable… as his manhood was the wave that lapped against the dewy shore my sacred hollow had become for him. We didn't stand a chance against the moon's bright pull.___

_His hips met mine and he shuddered, his face creasing in soft agony as he lost himself into me. The hot press of his pulse inside me and the heat of his breath against my neck where his head came to rest were all it took to send me spiralling over with him. I grasped him with the hungry squeezing of my muscles as I shattered with him… drinking all that he gave me deep inside.___

_"You… are so beautiful," he gasped as he wept. I cradled him close… my hand around the back of his head and holding him inside me… never wanting to let him go. I thought it was just release…_

** 

**CLUB ABRANI: 12.18pm May 20th**

"This is taking too damn long. What is going on? What's wrong?" 

Gareth glanced over at the companion who had voiced the impatience he felt. He fought to keep the revulsion off his face for the newest member of their team. He resented having him with them just because he came highly recommended by their overseas contacts. Ivan was foreign… Russian… Bulgarian… Hungarian or some such other "ian." Either way, Gareth didn't like him and wanted to take a knife to the handsome face that turned heads wherever they went and kindled the jealous anger inside him. 

"Ivan, relax. You worry too much," Matt, his long time friend mocked Ivan, as Gareth wandered over toward the group's newest plaything. He had yet to sample her. Any of them did, but he would… and soon… because all this waiting around was giving him an ache in his crotch. 

"Ivan!" the other man corrected, saying the name with the rich accent he had, that dragged out the vowel sound. "I've told you many, many times – I will begin to think you do it deliberately to annoy me." 

Matt squared off against Ivan and he started to worry there might be trouble, especially as Matt swallowed and backed up a step. 

"You do not want to do that, _my friend._" 

"You still worry too much," Gareth said and trying to draw Ivan's attention away from Matt sat down beside the girl and pushed her skirt, already short enough a little higher so that he could press his fingers between her thighs.   
  
"Hey!" Ivan called out sharply and fixed him with a cold, hard stare until he moved his fingers away from the girl. She shuddered beside him and he thought she might be fighting a sob. Either that or she liked his touch…. 

"Gyere ide," Ivan instructed the girl and held out his hand to her. She looked fearfully between the two men, but then much to his annoyance, got up and went toward the foreign man who closed his fingers round her wrist to draw her in to his side, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. 

Gareth suppressed a growl as Ivan dipped his head to kiss the girl, fixing him with a challenging look. She whimpered and Ivan held her tighter. 

"I thought I told you," he growled. "The girl is mine." 

Gareth held up his hand. He'd only meant to call Ivan off Matt, not start a fight, but even so, he hated that he had the girl. "Hey man, just…" 

Ivan cut him off with another ice-cold stare. 

"She belongs… to me," he repeated and drew her in front of him, wrapping both arms across her chest. She made a small sound as he pulled her closer, and Gareth saw her shudder against Ivan who curled his fingers tighter around her shoulders. 

"If I decide I am bored with her company," the fingers of his right hand lifted away from her left shoulder to frame her face and pass a light caress through her hair, "I will let you know." 

_You have to sleep some time you foreign fuck, and then I swear I'm going to take her hard and loud right by your bed! _Gareth hated being dictated to, and by this foreigner… He narrowed his eyes as he watched Ivan wrap his fingers into her hair and pull her head back. The man's tongue ran over her neck, followed by his lips and the girl whimpered audibly, and trembled so much that she had to grab for him. 

"Jesus man, you don't need to prove it to us!" In other circumstances it would have turned him on, but at that moment it irritated him more than he could stand and he turned away. "It was just a bit of fun." 

"OUT!" a frantic yell broke the tension. "Out now… we were set up!" 

Greg exploded into the room a second before Gareth started to hear the sirens getting nearer. He swore softly and ignoring Ivan turned with Matt to kick down the door to the office where their boss was making the deal that would help secure them a better future. 

** 

She struggled in his arms, and jumped each time the gun went off or a shot impacted the car they hid behind. If he timed it right, he could cross the street and get her into the squad car before the others saw him. She would be safe and he would be able to break this case. He knew the identity of the man they sought now. He had the evidence. All he needed was the break, and this could be it. Either way he intended to get the girl out before Gareth made good on the threat he always saw in the man's eyes whenever he looked at the girl. He held her close… he didn't want her getting hurt. Half carrying her, half dragging her, he made a run for the car. 

"I need you to listen to me very carefully," he said, his voice more gentle than before, but still firm. She met his eyes. Hers were tearful and confused. "I'm let…" 

"Hey, Ivan!" He sighed and let his eyes apologise for the fact that they had run out of time for words. She almost reached up to touch his face but he slapped her hand down as Matt yelled to him from the half opened doorway of their getaway vehicle, and closed his eyes for a second, leaning against he cold metal of the squad car. 

"What the hell are you doing?" Greg joined Matt at the van door. 

"Leaving them a message," he answered quickly, the accent now returned. He summoned the harsh coldness to fill his eyes with it, and raised his gun toward the girl's head as he opened the rear door of the squad car. If he were quick he could push her inside, fire of a shot and… 

"We don't have _time_ for that," Matt snapped. "Come on!" 

He had no choice… he still needed his evidence. Shifting his grip once more on the girl, he dragged her, dodging gunfire, returning deliberately wild fire of his own and praying that he didn't hit anyone, toward the vehicle, throwing both the girl and himself into it as it began to move. 

** 

**OFFICE OF PAUL BLOOM: 10.43am May 28th**

"And you want me to authorise what?" Bloom laced his fingers together, letting the photograph fall to the desktop. A secret thrill went through him that faded just as quickly… as much as he might want this, Donovan had been right in the challenges he'd made several months earlier. 

"Look," the commander of the taskforce said. "I have teams standing by, waiting on my word. We can finish this in less than ten. Face it Paul, the man's gone bad and we need to take him out, and shut his team down." 

"I don't know." The justice department boss shook his head and frowned. Frank gone bad? He could believe a lot of things, but that…? A year ago he would have been happy to shut down that particular SOG, had tried in fact, as had been pointed out, but now… with their solve rate… and after flushing out top ranking criminal elements such as Quiller – a presidential aide that had been selling arms for God's sake – he was more than a little reluctant to make an idiot out of himself and make a wrong call where Frank Donovan was concerned. 

_"You ever do anything like this again, endanger my team or one of my operations and I will SHUT YOU DOWN Bloom, and you know I can do that. All it takes is one phone call."_

"You don't know what you're asking." 

"Take… another look at the photograph." The commander nudged the glossy black and white print as he leaned over Bloom's desk. "In the middle of a gun battle, Paul…" 

He picked up the photo and lowered his eyes to the shiny surface. Frank's eyes were full of hate and rage. The handsome face, mouth framed by a neatly trimmed goatee beard was contorted into a dangerous expression of murder, but the most disturbing point of all, the gun held to a girl's head. She couldn't have been more than seventeen years old. 

He sighed heavily, and closed his eyes. What if they were right? What if, as Leggett had insisted, Frank had snapped and joined the other side? He shuddered. That was a scenario he didn't want to contemplate. 

"Do it," he said softly, knowing he would have to shut the team down too. 

** 

**RESIDENCE SARAN AND FRANK DONOVAN: 11.30am May 28th**

The SWAT team commander hadn't felt such satisfaction in a long time. It was vindication of sorts for all the times the son-of-a-bitch had dragged his team along on takedowns and ops where he told them "save lives" when they should have been shooting the crap out of anything that moved. And even if he could only get satisfaction by shaking up the man's family, well then he'd start there and move on… hoping that eventually he'd get to take out the man himself. He hadn't realised until that moment just how badly this particular SOG commander pissed him off. 

"We go in. We go in hard," he said to his team as they readied the battering ram. "Three… two… one…" 

He gave the signal and they broke the door in off its hinges, and surged inside, some men going upstairs, others following him into the lounge, preceding the social worker as they made for the screaming child. 

Another scream pulled his attention toward the kitchen. It was a scream of protective denial as he moved toward the baby. _Missus Donovan I presume…_

"No!" she yelled, as he reached toward the little girl. 

"Down on the ground!" His team were yelling at her, but fearlessly she stood her ground. He had to admit a moment of respect for the little woman. "Down on the ground now!" 

"You touch my daughter and I'll _kill_ you, you son-of-a- bitch!" But she kept moving and that irritated him. He raised his weapon, thinking about maybe shooting her, but in that moment a member of the team grabbed her and forced her roughly to her knees and further down onto the carpeted floor. 

"Let me go!" she still fought, even tried to get up again as he closed his hands around her daughter and lifted her from the playpen. He turned and gave her to the social worker. 

"Mamma!" The girl screamed for her mother and reached out toward her, throwing herself almost rigid and straight backed against the social workers body. 

"You're scaring her," The woman on the ground tried to get up, but the SWAT member had his knee in the small of her back. 

"Mamma!" 

"LET HER GO!" Saran Donovan sure was a screamer… and she struggled frantically, fighting with the officer that tried to cuff her as the social worker started to carry her daughter away. 

"She'll be quite safe, Mrs Donovan," he said. He took great pleasure in sounding as condescending and patronising as possible. "Co-operate with us, and it will just be a temporary measure." 

_Yeah, right!_ He met her eyes in a cold, hard and calculating stare. 

** 

**UC CRIB: 11.45am May 28th**

"Go through it again." 

Cody put his head in his hands as Monica asked him to repeat himself, _again_! They were all frustrated, brainstorming and staring at the barely covered piece of paper in the middle of the table. The facts they had to go on were few and far between. It had been three months since Donovan had disappeared, and they were still no closer to finding him than they had been. Somehow they'd been kept busy on other cases instead of helping with the search that Bloom assured them was ongoing for the missing team leader and had refused his offer of a temporary replacement… 

"I don't know what else I can say," he snapped, "that I haven't already said. He came in. He asked if I was okay. He gave me the tape and then he left." 

"Tape?" Jake asked. 

"Backup of his pc and I've already checked it." He virtually threw up his hands, meeting Monica's gaze before she could ask him the question that was at the tip of her tongue. "There's nothing there Monica, but a load of boring case reports and appointment calendars. I've checked hidden, read only… everything." 

She sighed and looked away. He sighed too. He didn't mean to take it out on her, but he felt that she was expecting him to suddenly come up with all the answers, and this time he just had nothing to give. No leads, no guesses… nothing. 

"There must be _something_ we can…" 

She was interrupted as the door exploded inward. And together with Jake, and Alex she drew her weapon. 

Faster than ever before, the contingency in place, but never having actually had to do it before he scooted his chair across the small space, went for the server keyboard and typed… "FDISK…" 

"Don't execute that command!" the voice rang out like a shot, followed by others instructing them to drop their weapons and get down on the ground, but he had already pressed the enter key before the man had even voiced the first sound of the entire sentence. It made him feel good. 

"Ooops, too slow," Cody mocked. 

In the next moment pain erupted in the small of his back as the chair was hauled away and something hard impacted his spine. He'd never felt pain like it and it drove him to his knees and he wasn't able to stifle his cry. Dimly he thought _great… now they're all going to think I'm a wimp!_

"Hey!" Jake called out. He turned his head at the protective note he heard in Jake's voice and saw him struggling slightly with the officer that was trying to cuff him. 

"What the hell is going on?" Alex asked as she was hauled to her feet. 

"Where are the backups?" Someone in a suit crouched beside him, cutting off his view of the other. He felt cut adrift and suddenly scared as his head was forced back. Still winded from the blow he fought for breath, afraid that the man was going to hurt him again. 

"The safe," he gasped. The man let him go and his nose hit the metal of the mezzanine floor. He wanted to stay there, he daren't move, but as the suited man moved away he caught sight of Monica. She was looking at him, full of concern… a fond look. She shook her head almost imperceptibly in his direction and he read her meaning. It was going to be okay. _They_ were going to be okay. 

He closed his eyes and sighed and when he opened them again the suited man nodded to another of the officers, and they set about blowing the safe. 

"I asked someone a question," Alex repeated, interrupted Cody's hazy thought that perhaps he ought to get up off the floor. "What's going on?" 

"As of thirty minutes ago," the suited man turned in her direction, pausing only to allow the sound of the plastic blowing the safe door off its hinges to die away. "This unit is shut down." 

"What!" Jake interrupted. 

"You'll all be debriefed, and if appropriate, reassigned," he continued. "But that will be a matter for the discretion of OPR." 

"What the hell does this have to do with OPR?" Monica snapped. 

"You're boss has lost it," sneered one of the SWAT team. "Gone bad…" 

"Fuck you!" Jake snapped in disbelief. His vehemence gave Cody the strength to come to his knees… at least he thought they were his knees, he still wasn't sure he could feel his lower half properly. 

"Excuse me?" Monica ignored the outburst and addressed the man in the suit. 

"I'm sorry Agent Davis," he said. "But we do have very good reason to believe that Frank Donovan is… no longer the man that you all believe him to be. And we expect your full cooperation in getting to the bottom of this." 

"To stitch him up, you mean," Cody said quietly, feeling suddenly more than a little aggrieved at the way they were all being treated, as two officers began to haul him to his feet. They deserved better than this His voice was heard, however and in the following moment the pain renewed as a nearby officer smashed the butt of his rifle down hard… harder than before into the small of his back. He cried out in pain, losing all of his breath, his vision brightening with stars that exploded upward into his head. 

"Fuck!" he hissed as he regained the capacity for speech and breathing, and when they let him go, his legs failed and he landed in a heap on the cold metal floor.   
  



	3. Act 2

UC: Undercover If… As We Try – Act 2 

_I hated that I couldn't tell her. It felt more than it ever could have, a worse betrayal than what I was about to do. Going out with the team was one thing. Going undercover something I never thought I'd have to do again… but going deep, never knowing what I might be called on to do? It was the worst feeling of all, but still, I knew what I had to do – duty over love, right?_

_That wasn't why I agreed. This was the only way I could get them all off my back once and for all, finally get myself free of the last few chains of the past that they constantly held over me._

_Or so I thought._

_The many ghosts of it swirled around me in the early morning mist as I left my house just before the sun rose, trying so hard not to look back, but knowing I would… Those ghosts were insidious and chilling reminders of a past that I'd fought so hard for so many years to leave behind._

_I argue with myself that I had been younger then, less experienced and that the mistakes I'd made could have been made by any agent still green and idealistic, but the truth of it is that they hadn't been mistakes at all. Those things I'd done, I did because I had no other choice… because the assignment, the case, didn't allow for even the slightest show of mercy in the course of pursuing the result. That was what Leggett had meant when he said that I was the only one that could take this case and bring those high in power and abusing that power to book if not necessarily to justice._

_I had crossed the line and should have spent the rest of my life watching cracks form in the paint on the inside of a jail cell for those things I'd done on the wrong side of the wire. Instead they sealed up my file, and then all the years after held that over me like a bureaucratic sword of Damocles. And so I took the case on the understanding that they'd finally blank it all out… free me at last. They were going to give me back my life; give me to Saran completely._

_And to do that I would probably have to cross that line again._

_Through the time I'd been working with the team it was something I'd gone out of my way to make sure would never happen to the agents under my command. It was why I was so hard on them… particularly on Jake. He reminded me so much of myself sometimes that it terrified me. I don't ever want to have go into a DA's office and plead for the liberty of one of my team because of something he… or she – Alex is a live wire too – has had to do in order to get a result._

_The mist that morning was full of the faces of all of the people I'd hurt in that case. All the people I'd abducted, beaten, abused, tortured… murdered… Yes even that. Does it make it any less wrong just because they themselves are living on the wrong side of the line? _

**FBI FIELD OFFICE – OPR: 10.00am May 29th **

"Agent Faulkner… you understand that you are entitled to have your attorney present during this meeting?" The OPR 'good-cop' agent leaned back in his chair. Cody wasn't fooled for a moment. He could see in the man's eyes that he meant him nothing but ill will.

"Monica will be just fine," he answered, leaning forward a little and regretting moving the instant he did. It had taken him all his time to get up out of bed even with the pain meds his doctor has prescribed for the injury to his back. "If it comes to it, her testimony of what happens here should be acceptable in court, I mean, after all, you guys didn't censure _her_."

"I urge you to reconsider," the agent said softly.

Cody glanced over at Monica who sat at the side of the table, there at his request as a witness at his disciplinary hearing. He could tell from the look on her face that she knew as well as he did that they were looking for a scapegoat, and that it very much looked as though it was going to be him. A knot started forming in his stomach.

"No," he said to the agents of OPR, "I don't understand why I should need one. This is a disciplinary review not a criminal investigation."

"You damaged government property," Agent 'bad cop' said accusingly.

"I followed protocol," he said.

"You destroyed evidence and hampered our investigations," the agent went on as though Cody had not spoken at all.

"I followed protocol," he repeated, raising his voice just a little. "I had no way of knowing who the hell it was that had come storming in. Article seventeen, subsection three point five: 'In the event of a hostile incursion to base or mobile operational headquarters the Technical Operations Agent shall initiate a system-wide data purge.' That's what I did."

"You knew who it was," Bad-Cop said.

"It could have been anyone, and you wouldn't want confidential, sensitive information falling into the wrong hands." Cody ignored him.

"You _were_ told not to execute the command," Good-Cop said gently.

"As I said at the time, it was already too late," Cody said with an impatient sigh. "I type at well over one hundred forty words per minute. It's one short word and the enter key."

"That aside," the agent conceded his point, bringing Cody a short lived moment of satisfaction, "the fact remains that you destroyed important data and set back the investigation by many hours while we restored the backup, which of course did not include the data from the day in question."

"You have that data from the statements you took from us."

"Computer data would have been more accurate, more objective," Bad-Cop argued. Cody only shrugged and glanced once again at Monica. She was frowning and that added to the knot of worry in the pit of his stomach.

"I'm sorry, Agent Faulkner," Good-Cop said, "but we have no choice. There are two officers outside, they will escort you back to the SOG Crib and wait with you while you pack up your personal effects and clear out your locker."

"You're _firing_ me?" Cody leaped to his feet, hissing in pain and having to lean forward onto the table, which only made the whole thing look more aggressive than he consciously intended. "I did my job. I followed protocol. You can't fire me."

From the corner of his eye he saw Monica get to her feet and start toward him. Behind him he heard the door opening and knew the two officers were within reaching distance of him. Instinctively trying to protect his back from further harm and ignoring the pain it caused him he twisted aside and backed up a step, keeping everyone in the room in front of him, where he could see them.

"This is _so_ out of line," he said. "You can be _quite_ sure that you _will_ be hearing from my attorney over this, and concerning the assault I suffered at the hands of the strike team."

"That's you're prerogative, Mr Faulkner." Good-Cop said, "And it's good that you'll have legal representation concerning this matter."

"What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?" He tried not to shout, but he was just too worked up to stop himself.

"There may well be criminal charges brought against you in this case," the agent said, "Destruction of property; obstructing an officer in the course of his duties; conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The DA is reviewing the matter as we sp—"

"You son-of-a—!" Cody had taken two steps and raised his hand before he knew what he was doing… before Monica's hand came down, cool and calm in the middle of his chest.

"Let it go, Cody," she said softly.

Deflated, he stood looking around at each of the people in the room, his mind refusing to process what was happening to him.

"Your weapon and your badge please," the agent from OPR held out his hand and took them when he handed them over. His hand trembled with his barely contained anger.

**LAPONTE 'HOTEL': 11.07am**

"You're sure that your organisation will still be able to deliver the merchandise on time?"

Standing behind their leader as bodyguard of sorts, Ivan studied the man with whom they were meeting. There was something disturbingly familiar about the face that was, at present, a mask of concern to match the question he had asked. The long dark hair was styled and swept back off the man's forehead and away from a face with high cheekbones and a strong almost square jaw.

The man wore a suit, elegant and tailored, nothing too unusual in that, but the cufflinks - silver with a strange symbol engraved within the raised square at their centre, like a speared serpent - were what set off the warning bells of recognition through Ivan like the chill of a fever.

Madira Nova…

Quickly he turned away before the man, who was looking at him now, could recognise him and in turning he spotted Gareth running his hands all over the girl he had been fighting so hard to keep to himself.

"Hey!" he called out and started across the room to reclaim his prize, even though he kept half an ear on the conversation that their boss was having with their client. He was glad of the excuse to move away. "I told you to leave the girl alone."

"You were busy, I thought—" Gareth said, though he did back up a step.

"I know what you thought," he said and pulled the girl against him, using her neck and hair to obscure himself from Nova. She whimpered as she always did.

"I assure you that everything will be ready." Parken answered, and Ivan saw that he glanced round with a less than happy expression in his direction. "All of the components are being located as quickly as we are able."

"I hope so," Nova answered smoothly, his Eastern European accent slipping through for a moment, before he got it once more under control. "My family will compensate your benefactor most handsomely if everything goes according to our designs."

"Of course," Parken said, and Ivan could hear the smile in his voice, "He is aware of that and is most grateful."

So, there _was _someone controlling Parken. Ivan sighed. He had hoped that Parken was the top of the food chain. Now he would have to find out just how far it went… how far _he _would have to go before he could assume control here.

"What the hell were you thinking?"

He almost jumped and snapped his attention back to events in the room when Parken loomed in front of him. Nova had gone, he had missed the end of the conversation before he left, and now it looked as though he was about to have a dressing down in front of everyone. Well no… he could not allow that to happen.

"Do not seek to blame me for what has occurred," he said angrily, "Walsh constantly provokes me. He knows the girl is mine and yet—"

"For god's sake, Ivan," Parken said, "take her next door and get it out of your system. We can't have any more displays like that in front of the client."

"There will not be," he said, "so long as Walsh understands—"

"Not good enough," Parken interrupted him, and taking the girl's arm he shoved her in the direction of the next door room before turning back to Ivan. "I've indulged you for long enough. You take what you want from her now. Tomorrow she goes back downstairs to earn her keep like everyone else."

Ivan swore softly. This was not how he had wanted it at all.

**UC CRIB: 11.30am**

It was almost physically painful to see other men sitting at his workstations, their hands all over his computers. It did little to improve his mood, and nothing at all to change his mind.

Sweeping past them quickly, away from the officers walking one either side of him and Monica just behind, he slammed open the door to the changing room. Thankfully the officers waited outside.

"I think you need to calm down," Monica said as though she knew what he was thinking.

"Bull_shit_ I need to calm down,' he retorted and pulled open his locker, almost throwing the contents into the small box he carried. "Give me your key."

"Cody—"

"Look, completely aside from the fact that they're out there doing their best to stitch Donovan up, that's _my_ software. I spent _years_ writing and testing that code, I'm not about to hand it to them without so much as a thank you," he said.

"You do this and they really _will_ have grounds to have your arrested," she warned.

"They're going to anyway, Monica," he said with a sigh, "you heard what they said back there. I may just as well get charged for something I actually did rather than something I didn't."

"I don—"

"I owe Frank for getting me out of the mess I got into after Michelle left. Give me. Your key."

Sighing, she handed over a small key. Cody fit it next to his into twin keyholes in the base of his locker and after turning them both, lifted out the panel. As he reached his hand inside, his fingers touched the cool smoothness of paper.

"Monica…" he said, lifting out a small envelope, addressed in Donovan's hand, bearing only his name. Quickly he opened it and shook out the contents into his hand; a single, gold coloured key and a membership card, in Cody's name, to a downtown gym.

Quickly he took out his keychain and threaded the key into place along side the others, and slipped the membership card into his wallet.

"He went to a lot of trouble," Monica said, "Why not just… leave whatever it was he wanted us to see in the MagPulse box?"

"Because," said Cody, reaching into his locker again, "he knows me well."

In the next moment he pressed the button that would send the electromagnetic charge racing through all the systems in the Crib, irrevocably frying the buildings electronics and destroying data. As the changing room was swaddled in darkness, as the sounds of confusion and then raised tempers came into the room from outside Cody leaned his head against the smooth cold steel of the bank of lockers.

_

* * *

_

_I'd been in my early teens when we came to this country – my mother, Max and I. Mother and father had met while my father was out there on some kind of relief work; peace keeping work. I forget really exactly what it was. All I remember of that past was that there was trouble, even then, in the place that I'd called home._

_Ostensibly my father saved mother, my brother and me from that – from a life where I would probably have taken up the weapons left behind by an older brother already killed in the fighting to follow that brother, whom I loved more than anything. It doesn't make sense then to say that I hated Father from the moment I set my eyes on his smiling face. _

_It didn't seem to matter what I felt if he even knew at all. Within a short space of time he'd brought us all here, married my mother and adopted Max and me. Should I have been more grateful to the man? In the end he was little better than the man that got me on my mother, me and five siblings, and had then sold the daughters he didn't want into God knows what kind of degradation. I came to learn that my new father was a violent man; the kind of coward that takes out a hard day on the people – particularly the woman – that care for him the most._

_So yes… I hated my fathers… both of them. But Father gave me a new life that came with a new name, and a new country… and the country I loved. I decided very early on that no matter what I did in the future, it would be in some way serving the country that had taken me in._

_Kids are cruel. I came to believe that it was some kind of inbuilt survival mechanism left over from evolutionary history when only the fittest would survive. They mocked the way I looked, the way I spoke… those early teenage years were hard, but looking back, I don't regret a moment of it – not the name calling, the teasing, the bullying or subsequent fights – all it did was serve to temper the steel that already ran in my veins. It made me stronger, and I spent a long time trying to hide that strength from those around me so that I would never be predictable, never be an easy target and for all the scrapes and difficulties I had during those years, I never took the steps that would have had me cross the line and get into serious and lasting trouble._

_Oh I had it in me… I'm in no doubt of that, but whether I saw the drugs and the guns and the gangs as something that would ultimately weaken me, or had some kind of strongly developed moral compass guiding me – I like to think the latter – I managed to stay on the right side of the law, without even so much as a traffic violation._

**LAPONTE 'HOTEL': 12.15pm**

"Please don't hurt me." She cowered away from him as Ivan entered the room, skittering backwards across the floor away from him until she hit the metal frame of the bed and gave a small cry.

"I have no intention of hurting you," he said, beginning to quickly and methodically check around and secure the room. He did what little he could to secure the door and moved toward the window, still going no closer to the girl.

He was irritated to find that the windows to the room did not open and swore softly before crossing the room again and entering the small 'en suite' bathroom. The window there was also secured. For a few moments that seemed to him to stretch into a hellish eternity, Ivan leaned against the sink in the bathroom.

He was trapped.

He was in little doubt that they would be listening. He could tell from the way that Parken had spoken to him that he was suspicious because of the girl. Ivan also thought that the girl was too afraid to be relied on not to slip up if he explained to her anything of the deception he intended. Finally he sighed and straightened up. Then he turned and headed back into the bedroom.

It was surprise more than pain that had him staggering backwards as the plywood drawer splintered over his head and right shoulder and instinct that had him lash out in self defence. The backhand slap sent the girl sprawling back to the floor. She scampered backwards again, to once more connect with the side of the bed as he moved toward her.

"No!" she cried and slapped at him, then beat at his body as he crouched in front of her, reaching for her.

He lifted her a little, bending her backwards over the side of the bed and pressing closer so that she would not be able to hurt either of them any more. When she cried out, he realised that he had scraped her back across the corner of the metal frame that was hardly protected by the cheap, thin mattress. That couldn't be helped for now. He leaned closer so that his lips were against her ear.

"I told you," he said, the accent he wore like a shield now a mere trace in his voice. "I don't want to hurt you."

"I don't want this," she said, and struggled more frantically. It must have been tearing her back to shreds. Clearly she hadn't understood.

To try and stop her from hurting herself any more he grabbed the front of her blouse and lifted her by it as he moved back to throw her onto the top of the mattress. The garment tore open part way, unable to support the deadweight she had made of herself.

"No," she pleaded with him again, high pitched and fearful even as she still struggled with him and tried again to beat at him with her fists. "Don't!"

Catching both of her wrists in one hand and holding them tightly he tried to support at least some of his weight with the other as he settled over her to pin her beneath him, to restrain her legs that were already kicking at him. Again he tried to speak to her, to get through to her.

"I won't hurt you," he said softly, "but they are listening, and they have to think that I am. Do you understand?"

Her struggles began to subside a little, but he still held her pinned against the mattress.

"Let go of me," she said, her voice tearful.

"Do you understand?" he repeated, "They have to believe that I have taken you."

He pulled back a little to look at her face as she nodded. Her lip was cut and bleeding and already she had a bruise where he had hit her.

"I'm going to let go. Please trust me," he said. She nodded and he carefully let go of her wrists and moved from on top of her.

"What if they come in?" she asked as she sat up a little, rubbing her wrists.

"They won't," he said, "At least not for a while. The others won't let Gareth interrupt before they think I've had enough time to finish with you. They don't want to provoke a fight between the two of us."

"You're not like the others," she said.

"Tell me what you've seen." He did not respond to what she had said, but quietly padded to the bathroom, to wet one of the washcloths there and fill one of the glasses with cold water. He then returned to sit on the side of the bed. "Who have you seen them give the girls to?"

She flinched as he reached for her face. He stopped and held up the washcloth. When she nodded to him again he gently took her chin in his hand and applied the cold wet cloth to her split lip. She winced.

"Um… I don't know," she said shakily, "Men in suits… business men I assume."

"You didn't recognise any of them?" he took the cloth off her lip. It looked a little better. "Take off your blouse."

She recoiled at once, pressing a hand against his chest to keep him away and letting out an involuntary whimper.

"It's all right," he said, "I want to look at your back where I scraped you over the side of the bed."

"Oh," she blushed and then turned her back on him as she unfastened what was left of her blouse and slipped it off. Along her back was an angry, bloodied scratch.

"This might sting," he said apologetically, and then as he dipped the washcloth into the glass of water he asked again, "Did you recognise any of the men?"

"No…Ah!" she cried out as he laid the wet washcloth against the scratch.

"I'm sorry," he said softly, and ran his thumb along the shoulder he held, trying to be comforting even as he dabbed painfully at the scratch. "What about names. Have you heard any of the other women talking about anyone by name?"

"Only about Parken," she shook her head as she spoke, and maybe, he thought, leaned against him a little more where he held her shoulder. "The women are terrified of him."

He frowned. "Why?"

"I don't know," she said, "something to do with a friend of his, 'The General.' They say that in the same way someone talks about Satan, you know?"

He finally put the washcloth and the water aside. "I've done what I can for now. Undress and get into the bed."

As he started to unfasten his shirt she turned to him with wide, fearful eyes, clutching her ruined blouse against the swell of her breasts.

"What are you doing?" she whimpered again as he dropped his shirt unceremoniously against the footboard of the bed and started on the fastenings of his pants.

"I said they wouldn't come in at once, but they _will_ come in." he sighed. "If they don't believe then I wouldn't like to even guess at what they will do to you."

He saw tears come to her eyes, but saw the understanding too as she turned away from him again and continued to undress. He tried not to watch the way her shoulders shook as she stripped down to her underwear.

He too disrobed, tossing his clothes away carelessly – hers too – those he could reach… but she had stopped and as much as he didn't want to make her any more uncomfortable than she already was he could not afford for them to find out what he was doing. He came around to the other side of the bed and took her by the shoulders.

"I _am_ sorry," he said, carefully wiping away some of the tears that shone on her cheeks, "but you have to…"

**RESIDENCE – CODY FAULKNER: 5.56pm May 31st**

"Where is he?" Jake asked softly as Alex let him into Cody's apartment.

"In his office," she nodded to a room off the hallway, "putting his system back together."

"_How_ is he?" he asked the more important question. He couldn't imagine that Cody would be anything other than pissed at spending two days behind bars and coming home to an apartment that had been trashed by OPR looking for more evidence against him.

Alex only shook her head.

Jake nodded. "He pick up… whatever it was that Donovan left for him?"

"On the way back from jail," Alex said.

"God, what a mess," Jake sighed and sat himself down on the cream coloured leather couch in the living room. "Are we _any _further along than we were before all this started?"

"Well we know that whatever it is that Donovan is into, _someone_ doesn't want us to find out about it," she said, flopping down beside him.

"Big surprise," he said with more than a hint of sarcasm. Then he looked around, "Where's Monica?"

"Kitchen, making Cody something to eat." Alex sighed. "He didn't do too well with prison food. He didn't do too well in prison at all."

"When you two have finally finished talking about me as if I'm some kind of basket case…" Cody's voice, harsh and angry made Jake jump. He couldn't remember the last time he'd heard him sound so bad… not even when he'd given him a hard time about the Barry Manilow incident. "…maybe you could give me a hand in here Jake. I can't lift the monitors because of what they did to my back and I need help with the cables, because my hands hurt like hell."

"Cody," Jake started as he got to his feet. He looked at the scratches on Cody's hands and his wrists; the bruises… "Wh—"

"I don't want to talk about it." He fixed Jake with an uncompromising stare. "You going to help me?"

"Sure," Jake said.

He followed Cody into the office where the half assembled computer systems stood on the various desks around the room. He might as well have been walking into the van. He suspected this was why they'd kept him inside so long; denied him bail until they'd finished with the computers. He could only imagine what kind of things they would have found out.

"As far as they know, I was working to enhance search and suspect recognition software." Cody said as though he had read his mind. "Before I went to the OPR review meeting I switched drives on the systems."

Jake nodded. He might have known that Cody would do something like that. Without pressing the point, and under Cody's direction, he started to help assemble the computers.

"You get anywhere while I was—"

"We've been preparing a street cover. I figure at this stage hitting the streets is going to yield as much information as will be useful, particularly if we can get our hands on whatever evidence they think they have against Donovan."

"I'll get it." Cody said with a kind of vindictive certainty in his voice, "Once I _in_ I'll get you whatever you need."

"It's probably a stupid question," Alex said from the doorway, "but how are you going avoid them figuring out it's us and just…"

"I'll bounce it around a little." Cody gave a humourless laugh, "Make it look like it's coming out of Europe if I have to. I'm sure Interpol would be interested in a rogue FBI agent after all."

"Cody—" Alex began, coming to crouch beside where he was sitting.

Cody sighed, cutting her off. "I know… I'm sorry. Just… I mean… who the hell _are_ these people? What do they think gives them the right to just _barge_ in to people's lives with lies and insinuation and… and… and the violence!"

Jake finished with the systems and turned, leaning on the desk to watch Alex and Cody. He didn't interrupt. They needed this… one or other of them. Maybe both…

"It must have been hard, Cody. I'm sorry." Alex put a hand onto Cody's leg.

Cody shook his head. "Are _we_ like that?"

"No," she said, but Jake could hear the hint of doubt in her voice. He could guess what she was thinking.

"Are we?" Cody pressed.

"Cody, no," Jake said with more conviction, "Don't you go thinking like that."

"How the hell am I supposed to think anything else?"

"Listen," Jake said, thinking on the spot. The last thing they needed now was to lose Cody. They could never crack this case without him. "You don't hear about people making a career out of OPR. The good guys move on. The assholes get stuck there and then they get bitter and put all their energy into trying to ruin people like you and me. People like Frank Donovan are like gold to them and if they can take a few other good guys down along with him then so much the better as far as they care."

Cody laughed. "God Jake, would you listen to yourself for a second. You sound—"

"This a private party?" Monica's appearance in the doorway saved Jake from having to answer Cody's astute observation that he sounded like an idiot. At least that's what Jake assumed he was going to say… something like that anyway, though knowing Cody it would have been more cutting than that. He did notice however that she was frowning in that way she did when she was really worried as she sat down beside their troubled friend. She handed Cody a glass of Pepsi and then pressed a couple of pills into his free hand.

"The'ya go, baby," she said quietly. "Don't let the pain of this get the better of you."

Cody took the pills, washed them down with the Pepsi, and then accepted the plate that Monica handed to him. He picked at the food at first, but Jake smiled a little in relief when, after a few minutes, he started to eat properly.

"Even though we all of us need a chance to breathe a little bit, we _have_ to get to the bottom of what's going on here," Monica started speaking after a little while. "Starting point for us I'm guessing is going to be whatever's in that package that Donovan left for us."

Cody swallowed the mouthful of food he was chewing and said, "Computer data."

"Makes sense," Alex said, "why else leave it specifically for Cody?"

_

* * *

_

_I discovered through my teen years and early twenties that I had a few very specific skills. I had a sharp mind and could process a lot of factors of a given problem very quickly. It was almost as though I could see them all on a pin board, and in my mind moved them around until they made a kind of logical sense… a timeline or graphical representation of cause and effect. I had a strong sense of what I thought was right and it guided my behaviour. And… I could be very persuasive._

_The father I despised even more now that I was older had money, so I had a good education… an education that was interrupted when I was recruited out of school into the exact place I wanted to be… where I could really help the country that had done so much for me._

_Finding my feet in the Company took a couple of years… frustrating years, because I wanted to be doing so much more than they were letting me. They kept me on a tight leash back then. Looking back it was good for me. I learned… so much. And then – when they wanted me; when I could be most useful to them – they finally gave me what I wanted: active status._

_The cover wasn't hard to adjust to. They used what I had once been to create who I was to be. It's considered a quick fix these days – something to give an agent when you don't have time for anything else – but it suited our purpose. So once more I became the young man of Eastern Europe that I had once escaped._

_It was arms… but then isn't it always? A terrorist organisation in Eastern Europe being supplied with American weapons with which to further their causes._

_My orders were simple. Get close to the head of the organisation – gain their trust and then gather the evidence that would convict their American conspirators. Easy, right? But for one small thing, perhaps… a new skill that I discovered I had…_

_I was good at being ruthless… and I was prepared to do anything for my new country… for the assignment they had trusted me with… even that first step across the line._

_It was early on. I was still establishing my cover with the men that had recruited me into their cell and I was eager to attract the attention of the higher echelons. One of our young men was caught with his pants down – literally – with a local peasant girl when he should have been keeping watch while we picked up a supply of arms hidden in one of the root cellars of the hovels there. I was a stalwart among those of us that punished him – beat him – though I baulked at taking his woman… something that some of the others did not. So it was a small step – but it was a step none-the-less._

_I still find myself praying for forgiveness of that even today_

**RESIDENCE – CODY FAULKNER: 11.22pm**

"If you're seeing this then I'm guessing things are not going so well." Frank Donovan's image sat on the computer screen looking out at him. His face was pulled into his trademark worried frown, but something in his eyes belied the calm delivery of the things he was saying. "I'm sorry for that, just as I'm sorry for not being able to come to you with this _before_ the event. I only hope that when you've _seen_ this… studied these files you'll understand why I couldn't do that and find a way to both forgive me and, I suspect, help me take these people down."

Alone now, Cody watched through the message for the second time, trying to find the clues he was sure they had missed. There was a lot of data – too much for them to have time to go through all at once. The team was coming back in the morning, and would no doubt all have their own ideas about some of the things that Frank had said.

He was tired but had been unable to sleep, so now sat in his pyjamas pants staring at the computer screens; staring at data. Cody ran a hand over his face, across his eyes. What did he know – absolutely know for certain? He knew that Donovan had left the clue to finding the data in the MagPulse box. That meant they'd only find it if there was serious trouble. Being where it was it was more likely than not that it would be him that would access the box, and that there would need to be one other person with him as he found it…

Absently he reached for a sheet of paper from the printer's tray and with a pen wrote shakily, 'trouble' and 'me plus?'

…He also knew that Donovan was anal enough to build in safeguards in case it _wasn't_ one of the team that accessed the MagPulse box… so he was as sure as he could ever be that they didn't yet have all of the evidence. But where would he have left the rest for them so that it wouldn't be discovered?

He got up from the chair and paced the length of the small room for a moment. Nothing but renewed pain came to him. Sighing he checked the time and then padded toward the door to go in search of pain medication. It had been long enough since the last dose, he could take another, and maybe with a clearer head he'd make sense of the puzzle he'd been left.

Light from the open doorway reflected off something on the mantelpiece, catching his attention as he crossed the room; a photograph frame. Cody frowned and put off going to the bathroom for the pills. Instead he crossed the room to go and pick up the frame.

It was a photograph of his mother and father. The glass of the frame was broken, a spider web of cracks running across its surface…

"_You couldn't have told me _before_ the event? Before you went and destroyed the _life_ we made together?" he stood trembling, staring at the photograph on the mantle. If he turned and looked at Michelle he knew he would lose his temper completely._

"_You're never _here_," she said coldly._

"Michelle," Cody whispered, and immediately started back toward the office, still carrying the photograph.

Once there he started the .avi file that was still playing over again, listening carefully to the words and inflection… everything that Donovan said. It did not take long.

"You left a tape at Michelle's house." All the breath went out of Cody in a rush and he whispered, "You son-of-a-bitch… without the tape nothing will make sense."

Feeling suddenly nauseous, he went quickly to the bathroom, barely making it before the remains of his dinner brought him to his knees in front of the porcelain. Afterward, trembling with cold and the pain – they had really done a number on him in jail. More than he'd ever let Jake or the others know – he leaned against the sink, trying to freshen himself up and take the terrible taste out of his mouth.

His hand trembled as he filled a glass with water and caught sight of the livid scratches and darkening bruises around his wrists, and through the mirror, the purple boot prints on his chest and his sides.

"God…" he gasped, and for a minute or two he couldn't breathe. When the next breath did reach through his paralysis it accompanied a painful sob as everything that had happened in the past week came rushing in on him. He gripped the sides of the sink and tried to stop himself, but it only made matters worse. Finally giving in he sat down on the floor of the bathroom and cried as he hadn't since he was eight years old.

Much later, medicated against the pain, he crawled under the duvet and curled himself into an exhausted little ball. Tomorrow would be soon enough to tell the others where to go to find the rest of the Intel they needed.

**RESIDENCE – MICHELLE PENNERTON: 8.34am June 1st**

"I'm sorry officer," Michelle said with more than a little annoyance in her voice, "but I really don't know how I can help you."

"It will only take a few moments," Alex said calmly.

"But I'm going to be late for work."

"I'm sure your employer will understand," Jake said. "And it shouldn't take long."

"You know what?" Michelle sat down on the couch and spread her arms, "Go right ahead. You people are all the same anyway."

"Right on cue," Jake heard Cody's voice in his ear.

"Really Miss Pennerton," he said, "It _will_ only take a few minutes."

He caught sight of Alex's face as she stood slightly behind the woman to whose house Cody had sent them to search for the tape he said that Donovan had left there. He could tell that, like him, she found the woman's attitude irritating at best.

"Just do it and get the hell out of there," Cody's voice sounded in his ear again, "I don't want to have to listen to her whine any more."

"May I use your bathroom?" Alex asked before the woman could complete whatever it was her mouth was open to say.

"Sure, I guess," Michelle turned her head a little so that she could see Alex, and Jake could see suspicion in her expression.

"Perhaps you could show me where you keep your video cassettes? Make this go a little faster?" he said.

With another sigh, (which elicited another sigh from Cody), Michelle got up from her place on the couch and began pulling piles of video cassettes from their minor disarray on the shelves of the entertainment centre, into a pile of greater disarray on the floor. Jake crouched down and began to examine the tapes.

* * *

"Alright, Cody," Alex said softly once she had reached the bathroom. "Just tell me where."

"That much I don't know," he said. "Turn around slowly and give me a view of the room."

He leaned back a little as Alex did just that and watched the feed coming through on the monitor, glancing occasionally at the signal from Jake too. It would have to be somewhere she wouldn't find it… so something she wouldn't check often.

"Don't suppose it's in the cistern, do you?" Alex asked, providing him with a detailed view of the toilet bowl as she looked down.

"I doubt it," he said, seeing the colour of the water, "there would have been no way for Donovan to tell how quickly the block would run out and she would have to put in a new one."

Alex sighed. "Good point."

She started to methodically check in all the places she could think of, no doubt as aware as he that there was only a finite amount of time before Michelle's suspicions were given more credence. Cody studied the monitor as she looked around hoping his greater knowledge of the woman whose bathroom they were searching would give him an edge.

'Wait… wait," he said just as he thought they were running out of time. As she turned again he had spotted that the footboard of a small set of shelves that held Michelle's toiletries was at a slight angle. "Bottom of the shelves… is that loose?"

Alex crouched down, affording him a better view as she pushed at the strip of wood. It moved as she did.

"Anything?" he asked, and held his lip between his teeth as Alex reached into a pocket and took out a miniature flashlight which she shone into the space under the bottom shelf.

"Got it," she said and started to stretch her hand to try and reach into the gap, "Or at least I will have once I can get…"

Cody held his breath willing Alex' hand to fit; her fingers to at least touch it. He jumped as Monica's hand came down on his shoulder.

"Take it easy, Cody. She'll get it," she said.

"I have it," Alex gasped, and watching the monitor he saw her pull out a slim black case protected inside a plastic evidence bag. For a moment it occurred to him that he didn't want to know how Donovan had got it there in the first place.

_

* * *

_

_Once you've taken that first step it's so much easier to take the next… and the next… and harder to stop. That coupled with the ruthless determination to fulfil my mission was, more than anything else, what brought me to trouble's door._

_I had achieved my aim and attracted the attention of those higher up in the organisation that I had by now successfully infiltrated. One piece of knowledge that has never been far from my mind since those days – success brings with it its own set of challenges. For me it was 'renown.'_

_Oh, not many of them knew my face…. But my name…. it was the name of one not to be crossed; of a stalwart member of their cause; ruthless and dedicated to their ideals – at least as far as any of them knew anyway, because most of it was rumour and exaggeration that I did nothing to discourage._

… _And I was one of the FBI's and Interpol's most wanted. Ironic really._

_They wanted weapons. Their agents in the US were not bringing them the volume of weapons traffic that they wanted and so I was sent back to 'motivate' them into providing more. Of course this meant that in almost a single fell swoop I had achieved half of my objective… because they gave me the names of their most active agents in the United States, but I still only knew _one_ of the second tier of leaders. To get the others I would have to hold on to the cover for just that little longer._

_So I came back home, and though I told my superiors in the Company the names of the terrorist agents I also told them that if they wanted the leaders they would have to hold off – give me a chance to set something up. They argued, of course they did…_

"_You're too close to this, Frank. It's getting to you. We're pulling you out. We're pulling you out _now._"_

"_No," I said, leaning forward onto the table. "You were the ones sent me into hell. Did you really expect its fires not to touch me?"_

"_The things you've seen… the things you've done—"_

"_Were necessary," I almost spat the words at them. "You told me when you sent me deep that I was to do whatever I _had_ to; anything that would crack this case."_

"_Torture? Rape? Murder?"_

"_Don't believe everything you read in the newspaper."_

"_Are you telling me you didn't do those things?"_

"_I have never touched a woman against her will," I said._

"_And the rest of it?"_

"_They were terrorists," I said almost giving a shrug._

"_Frank, will you listen to yourself for a moment? Justifying atrocities just because of who the victims were?" The man sighed, "That's not _you_."_

"_Just two more weeks, Niall."_

_He shook his head. "And how many more murders?"_

"_Whatever. Means. Necessary. That's what you told me."_

"_Yeah well maybe I was wrong."_

"_Two weeks," I said… and walked out without waiting for an answer._

_Looking back on what happened during those two weeks I had so insistently snatched from the hands of my superiors _I _was the one that was wrong. I should have listened to them… allowed them to cut our losses and take what we had with the gratitude of the needy._

**LAPONTE 'HOTEL': 6.15pm June 3rd **

He heard the screams almost the moment he put the key card into the slot and pushed open the door, even if they were stifled. Anger welled in Ivan more hotly than he could have imagined it would, and before he knew what he was doing he had crossed the room and thrown himself at the adjoining door so hard that it splintered under him. He all but fell into the room.

Gareth had the girl pinned beneath him though he had looked up as Ivan burst in and was already moving away to defend himself from the rage Ivan knew he must have in his eyes. He launched himself at the other man and managed to catch the collar of his open shirt and pull him to the ground at the side of the bed.

He didn't wait for Gareth to have time to protect himself, or even to regain his own balance. He simply drew back his foot and kicked Gareth hard and low.

The kick was not fast enough though and Gareth turned so that Ivan's boot connected with his hip. Then he rolled the other way and swept Ivan's feet from under him. He landed hard, but even winded managed to sweep his foot in an arc that caught Gareth aside the head. While the other man was stunned he scrambled to his knees.

He didn't get much further than that before Gareth's roundhouse punch caught the side of his jaw and he rocked back raising his hand to slap aside the following uppercut, and then left handed threw a punch of his own that connected with Gareth's nose and sent him once more to the floor.

In the moment's pause he looked toward the bed where the girl was rolled into a ball on her side, trying to cover herself and find her clothes at the same time. Her shoulders shook in sobs he could not hear. It only fuelled his anger and had him reaching for his weapon.

Gareth rushed him again before he had a chance to close his hand around the roughened grip. His body was slammed and forced backwards by the weight of his opponent's, and as he fell to the floor blows began to rain down on his body… as hard and as desperate as they were, he did not feel them against the fire flowing through him.

"I told you to leave her alone," he said, his voice low, almost rumbling from his belly like an angered dog. He blocked the next blow and then smashed upward at the other man. His forearm connected with Gareth's already injured nose and the other man rolled away with a grunt.

Ivan followed him, fighting mean and dirty now, aiming well below the belt with kicks and punches as his temper guided his hands and feet. When Gareth more fell aside than rolled away, Ivan reached for his gun and pointed it straight at the other man's head.

The girl let out a scream as, completing his roll over his discarded pants, Gareth came to his knees with his own weapon in his hands pointing right at Ivan's head.

"Are you going to shoot me, Ivan?" Gareth said breathlessly, and wiping blood from his face with his left hand before cradling his right with it as he held the gun.

"I said to leave the girl alone."

"And Parken told you that you were finished with her."

"I say when I'm finished," Ivan said roughly, and drew back the hammer on his weapon, "No one else."

"You won't pull that trigger," Gareth said mocking him with his confidence, "You know that I'd still have time to get one off. You'd be dead too."

Ivan shifted his aim.

"In my experience, when a man's balls explode between his legs his first instinct is to cup what's left of his manhood in useless hands," Ivan said in a chill voice.

Gareth's eyes widened, the gun trembled a little in his grasp. It was all Ivan had been waiting for. His booted foot came up quickly between Gareth's thighs. Quick and hard he drove the kick against the man's testes as though he meant to push them into his belly.

Gareth roared and doubled over; right into the path of the descending handgun that struck him aside the temple, sending him swiftly down into what Ivan imagined must have been the relief of unconsciousness.

"Get dressed quickly," he said quickly, glancing up at the girl as he found something with which to tie up the unconscious man. "I'm getting you out of here."

"The others will be back any minute," she said, and he could see from her eyes that she was thinking of him, and the trouble he would be in if it were discovered what had happened here. He shook his head.

"I said I'm getting you out of here, after that it's up to you."

"I don't have anywhere to go." Her voice shook as she spoke, but she was dressing none-the-less. He crossed the room and taking hold of her wrist and taking a pen from his pocket he wrote an address on her skin.

**RESIDENCE – CODY FAULKNER: 8.28pm**

"So what do we know?" Alex asked, sitting back and cupping the mug of coffee in both hands.

"Eastern European terrorist organisation; American arms shipments; at best a double agent inside the NSA—" Monica started to tick off the facts that they'd gleaned from the tape and the files they had from Donovan. She was interrupted by Jake.

"At worst some treasonous bastard—" He too was interrupted, this time by a knock on the door.

"Expecting company?" Alex asked with a raised eyebrow toward Cody.

"Not tonight," he answered, refusing to allow himself to colour up. Quietly he padded across the room to the door. Jake went with him. Cody did not find it comforting that before Jake would allow him to answer the door, he drew his gun.

Carefully he opened the door to find himself face to face with a young woman that looked as though she had been in a fight. Her face was bruised there were scratches on her hands where she held them against her body, holding closed the ripped shirt she wore over a flimsy undershirt.

"Please help me," she said before he could draw breath to ask either who she was or what she wanted. "Ivan sent me."

"Ivan?" he asked, very confused.

"Yes," she said and held out an arm in his direction on which he could see the black of writing. "He made me memorise a number. He said you'd know what it meant… xmr99184874."

"Donovan," Cody gasped as she perfectly recited their missing leader's badge number and, taking her by the arm, he drew her into the apartment and shut the door behind her. Then he looked at the handwriting on her wrist. There was no doubt. It was Donovan's.

**CLUB MELLONMAR – CHICAGO: 4.35pm June 4th **

He slumped against the bar, playing into the roll of the foreigner that had drank too much while searching the bars for his friend. Occasionally he would murmur in as slurred voice as he could manage the words that Alex was speaking into his ear and sometimes throwing in something in English for good measure.

"He shaid he'd help… shee?"

He'd spent the afternoon up and down the more shady areas of the city playing out the same scene and mentioning Ivan's name as often as he could. Sooner or later it had to pay dividends. He felt secure in the knowledge that Cody and the team could see all around him from the cameras they had placed on him… in a ring, a button… even one of the studs on the back of his jacket, though he knew that Cody was worried about the latter two. But right now they didn't have access to anything more sophisticated, and only had the ring because Cody had been repairing it at home before ORP had descended on him like an avenging angel.

"If they scan you, Jake, they'll find them and then you're basically screwed," was actually what he had said. Jake had assured him that he would 'accidentally' leave the jacket behind if anyone _did_ make contact with him and Alex or Monica could pick it up.

He turned his head slightly so that, out of the corner of his eye, he could see where Monica sat drinking.

"Bartender," he called out, thinking it was probably about time he did something. He slapped his empty shot glass down onto the top of the bar. "'nother drink…"

"Think you've had more than enough, buddy," the bartender answered, coming toward him and reaching toward the shot glass with no obvious intention to refill it. Jake pulled it protectively back toward his body.

"_I think we have something… on your five."_

Cody's voice in his ear gave him a moment to take a glance toward where four shapes were peeling themselves away from the wall slightly behind and to the right of him.

"Come on, buddy, give it up," the bartender said with a bored sigh.

"That's quite all right, bartender," the voice that spoke was quite refined and held only the merest trace of an accent, "I think my friend and I can handle one more drink."

"Yeah," Jake said petulantly, at the same time slipping off his jacket and letting it fall between the bar and the adjacent bar stool. "Shee… 'nother drink…"

When he turned to face the speaker he found himself looking at a tall man with dark hair and skin that, although pale, looked somehow weathered. The dark eyes shone with an icy steel that bored in to Jake's own as if searching for something. Deliberately he let his eyes unfocus.

"Jacob," he said, speaking the name with a y sound and holding out his hand to the man, "Pleashed to meet you."

"I can assure you more of the pleasure is mine," the man replied. Then he gestured behind him to the three heavyset men. "My friends tell me that you have been looking for Ivan."

Jake nodded, "Ivan'sh my friend,"

He leaned forward as though he intended to speak confidentially to the tall man, just to test the theory he had that the ones behind were not, 'friends,' but hired help – most likely bodyguards or henchmen. Two of the three took half a step forward until the tall man shook his head a little. Then they stopped, but did not back away.

"I fell into a shpot of trouble, Shee," Jake continued, "Ivan offered to help me out."

"I see," the man said and without skipping a beat, pushed the now filled shot glass in Jake's direction.

Jake repeated the salutation that Alex spoke quietly into his ear, and then downed the burning liquid in one swallow. He was relieved to hear the same word come from the tall man's lips.

As he lowered the empty glass one more to the top of the bar he asked, "Do you know where Ivan is?"

"No," the man said, "but my friends and I might be able to help you to find him… if _you_ can help _us._"

"Me?" Jake asked, acting more surprised than he really was.

"Come," the man said, putting down his own, barely touched drink. "We can talk about it more comfortably in my apartment."

"But I don't… I don't know you…" Jake protested weakly.

"My name is Nova," the man said, "Madira Nova. Shall we?"

"Right," Jake staggered a little bit as he got to his feet. "Madira Nova."

With the help of two of the other men, he moved with a swaying gate toward the door, only turning back when Monica's voice rang out from behind him.

"Hey," she called, "You left your jacket."

The remaining henchman snatched it from her hand, and as he turned back toward the door, away from Monica, he could see she held the button and the stud against the palm of her hand.

**RESIDENCE – CODY FAULKNER: 9.18pm**

"Anything?" Alex asked as she brought Cody another mug of coffee.

He shook his head, "It's been running for three hours and still nothing. DMV, DSS, NCIC, Interpol… nada. It's like this guy doesn't exist."

"He has to be there somewhere, Cody." Monica said from the small couch that sat along the wall in the office.

"I know that," he said, irritated. "And I'll find him… just… give me time, okay?"

"We may not _have_ time," Alex said worriedly, looking at the pictures coming in from Jake's ring-mounted camera.

"I know that too," Cody said all but ready to strangle the two women, "Maybe the two of you have some better suggestions than what I'm already doing?"

"We're just worried," Monica said, getting up to cross to him and put a hand onto his shoulder, "I'm sorry. I know what you've been through lately. The last thing you need is _us_ putting pressure on you."

"It's all right," he said, sighing, "Look, this case is related to arms-smuggling right? What if I check the DOD?"

"Can you _do_ that?" Alex asked, almost choking on her coffee.

"Give me long enough," he answered in a half whisper as he turned to the keyboard, "and I can do just about anything."

For the next thirty minutes he moved his fingers as fast as he could on the keyboard. Stiff as they were there were several times when he almost did not re-route the anti-trace measures he had in place fast enough. He routed all but one of the computers in to the task of cracking the DOD firewalls. The last he left monitoring Jake… just in case.

When at last the computer bleeped acceptance of his protocols, he was almost as surprised as Monica and Alex. He did not, however, let his surprise get the better of him. He wasn't sure how long he had before the system disconnected him again. A security measure that he knew many agencies built in to their external access routines. He set the computer to searching for Madira Nova. In less than four minutes he had a total of fourteen matches, both by string and image which he quickly downloaded onto digital media and then disconnected form the mainframe. Only once this was done did he allow himself to breathe.

"Wow, Cody…" Alex blinked at him.

"Yeah," he said, then shivered as he realised that if anyone came storming his apartment now there was probably enough evidence present to convict him of treason at least three times over. He breathed out slowly. "So let's see what I've stolen."

* * *

"_You don't want to do this, Ivan." The man was whining as all the others had before they'd broken and told me the names of their superiors. It grated on my nerves. "You can't get to me here, like you did to the others."_

_So my reputation had once more preceded me. Granted this time he was probably right… hell he _should_ have been right. There was no way – were I completely myself – I would have tackled anyone so publicly, so exposed as I was. And endangering the public too?_

_The man I was after worked as a clerk at the Bridge Street branch of Westbourne Savings and Loan Bank. I was running out of time and had all but one of the names I needed – so I thought. So almost certain that my showing up in the middle of the day and threatening the man would save me a lengthy interrogation later, I walked into the bank, turned the sign to closed and approaching his desk, pulling out my gun._

_Of course at the appearance of a firearm, the security guard drew his own gun and attempted to challenge me. I shot him without a thought. Thinking back on it, at least in that case, I followed standard protocol; shooting to wound the man rather than to kill._

_The shot caused panic among the bank's patrons and I was forced to initiate a siege situation. I hadn't thought it through very well – I was just too eager to see the case at an end._

_My second shot went toward the ceiling, and I ordered everyone to get down on the ground._

"_Everyone down, face down on the floor," I yelled, "No one interferes, no one else gets hurt."_

_To their credit, most of the general public obeyed at once._

"_You," I pointed my gun at a senior bank teller, "You get your staff round here with everyone else. How long do I have?"_

"_What do you mean?" she asked. She was clearly terrified._

"_Don't play games," I said, "I know you've already tripped the alarm. How long do I have?"_

"_I don't… I don't know." At least she didn't try to lie to me. I nodded in respect of that._

"_Get your staff round here," I said, "I meant what I said about no one getting hurt so long as they don't interfere. I'm here for Williams, no one else."_

_A scream behind me, and I turned to see my quarry had taken a hostage of his own. "You don't want to do this, Ivan. You can't get to me here, like you did to the others."_

"_Let the woman go and we can talk. You and me," I said to him, "man to man."_

"_Man to butcher, you mean," he said, "I know what you do. You think I'd be stupid enough to give up the only think keeping me—"_

_The retort of my weapon cut him off, and the hostage fell limp in his arms. Without waiting he reached for another, I shot _him_ too, before Williams even got a hand to him. My third shot took Williams in the leg._

"_If you know me," I said coldly, walking up and taking the gun from his now unresisting hand, "you'd know that you can't hide behind anybody."_

_Ruthless and without mercy I raised my foot and put pressure on his injured leg until he was sobbing with the added pain._

"_Who do you report to, Williams?" I said softly, "Why is he withholding the merchandise?"_

"_Withholding…?" Williams sobbed again with the pain I put on his leg. "I don't know what you're talking about."_

"_I think you do," I said, "Who is it?"_

_He screamed as I took hold of his injured leg and twisted it. The bone was undoubtedly broken by the bullet I'd put into him, and he was losing quite a lot of blood, but I took hold of his leg and twisted._

"_Stop it! Stop!" One of the women – one of his co-workers I think – nearby screamed. "You're hurting him."_

_Still holding his leg twisted in one hand I turned and pointed my gun in her direction._

"_No!" she screamed, and covered her head with her hands._

"_I told you not to interfere," I said softly, and discharged another round into the ground beside her._

_Was I being deliberately cruel or was I trying to preserve a cover that I knew was about to come to an end… in a case that I knew had reached a conclusion? I still ask myself that question every single day._

_The woman screamed and crawled away from the space where she had been, leaving Williams once more to his fate, and me to my interrogation._

"_Tell me what I want to know," I said to him, "And I'll leave and you can get medical attention. I'll even call the ambulance myself."_

"_I can't te—" he gasped._

"_Tell me," I demanded._

"_Attention in the bank!"_

_So my time had run out. The police had arrived and it wouldn't be long before someone had me on a line trying to negotiate me out of the bank. I knew the standard procedure and the psychology of it and part of me wanted to just hold off and go through all that with them, demonstrate the power I had over the situation._

_It was probably _that_ realisation sinking through to the good in me that I had buried so deeply over the past – however long it had been – that made me put an end to it all there and then._

"_Listen to me, everyone," I said, "I want you to get up, slowly and carefully, and walk out of the bank. Make sure you keep your hands in the air – that way the police won't accidentally shoot you."_

_I could almost feel the confusion in the stares that turned my way._

"_I told you," I said, "I only came for Williams. The rest of you can go. But go slowly. If you startle the police, they might just shoot."_

_Even before they all started moving I holstered my weapon and started to try and give medical attention to the people I'd hurt. The first of William's hostages was dead and there was nothing I could do there, but the second man and the security guard…_

_I was still crouched over the guard, pressing his shirt against the wound in his shoulder and talking to him quietly when someone behind me called my name… my American Name; the true name I hadn't heard in so long._

"_It's over, Frank. We're bringing you home."_

"_This man needs medical attention. The man over there's just a flesh wound. The suspect is down with a gunshot wound to his left—"_

"_Frank… did you hear what I said? We're brining you home. Move away from the security guard and turn around slowly."_

_I did as I was told to find myself staring down the barrel of Niall Leggett's gun. Slowly I raised my hands to either side of me._

"_What are you going to do, Niall? Shoot me?"_

"_You _did _this, Donovan. There are witnesses," he said. "What the hell were you thinking?"_

"_I was doing my job." I shook my head. "I…"_

_I trailed off what I was saying. Whether his words had sunk in or the adrenaline had worn off… or a combination of things, but… I looked around at the mess I'd made. The strength fled my legs and I sat back on the ground, looking at my bloodied hands, horrified._

_When I next looked up at Niall he was crouching beside me to one side, an EMT on the other. I was in shock…_

**WASHINGTON DC: 9.37am June 5th**

Alex slid onto the park bench on one side and Monica the other.

"Mr Leggett," Monica said softly, holding her badge open for the surprised man to see.

"Or should that be _Agent_ Leggett," Alex added, doing exactly the same. She felt a strange kind of satisfaction when the man sighed.

"Agent Davies," he greeted them both, "Agent Cross, what a pleasant surprise."

"Cut the crap, Leggett," Alex said, unwilling to be patient, "We know what you did. But I don't think _you_ do."

"You've done very well to trace things as far as you have, Agent Cross. I'm impressed," he said calmly. "That Tech-op of yours must be better than anyone thought."

"You _knew_ that Donovan hadn't gone bad," Monica accused, "you could have stopped all of this… with his family, with us… Cody… why the hell didn't you—"

"You know the answer to that as well as I do if you think about it for a moment, Agent Davies."

"Someone inside the Bureau," Alex answered for them both. Leggett nodded. "Who?"

"I don't know," he said, "It was another of the things that Frank was supposed to be finding out."

"Just what you got over him?" Monica asked, "To make him do this."

"Ah, so you haven't yet managed to decrypt his file," Leggett said.

"She asked you a question, asshole!" Alex snapped, grabbing the man's shoulder and pushing him back against the bench.

"Insults are not going to get you anywhere, Agent Cross, neither is physical violence," he said, "but to answer your question – when your boss worked with me, some of the things he did were… less than above board."

"So you _did_ blackmail him," Monica said.

"Persuaded."

"You son-of-a-bitch," Alex pressed against his shoulder again, "you do realise that Scirocco is pulling everyone's strings… yours _and_ this organisation you're trying to shut down."

"What!" He looked between the two of them. "How do you _know_ this?"

Monica shrugged, "Because our Kung Fu is better than yours."

"Walk with me," he said and Alex let go of his shoulder allowing him to get up. "And tell me what you know."

"Why in hell would we trust you?" Alex asked, walking beside Leggett, unable to keep the loathing out of her voice. "You sent Donovan undercover without backup and then left him – and us – to get hung out to dry!"

"Because I can make all of that go away," Leggett said calmly, "Clear up the misunderstanding about your boss; reinstate your team; make the charges against Mr Faulkner go away; reunite Donovan's family…"

"You were a part of all that," Monica accused.

"I was… somewhat responsible for ensuring that certain CCTV footage made its way to the right office," Leggett said, still appearing unshaken by anything that was happening. With a shrug he added, "You did the rest all by yourselves."

"Bastard!" Alex spat.

"Perhaps so, but I'm the bastard that you need to help you, or you wouldn't be here," he said. "Now tell me what you know."

Alex exchanged a glance with Monica and saw her shrug.

"General Scirocco has recently received government approval for a contract he proposed between the military and a manufacturing company called Nova-Lucas Technologies. It's a huge contract, running into billions of dollars," she said.

"There's nothing wrong with that, Agent Cross," Leggett said. "The United States must be able to defend herself against her enemies."

"Ordinarily, sir, we'd agree with you," Monica said, Leggett turned her way allowing Alex a moment to subdue the angry colour rising in her cheeks. "However, if you'd let us finish…"

"Since the death of Benjamin Lucas in circumstances that are still being investigated by various agencies, including the FBI, Nova-Lucas Technologies has been headed solely by the company's other director, Madira Nova, who bought Lucas' share of the company from his grieving family before they ever saw their way to the attention of any of the minor shareholders, thus giving him the controlling interest in the company." Alex paused again, running a hand through her hair.

"Nova and Scirocco negotiated the contract to include a plus or minus two percent margin for error in numbers supplied, allowing Nova to produce two percent greater number of arms ordered, but potentially ship two percent less to the military." Monica took up the story.

"So this is a case of embezzlement then?" Leggett asked, "Charging for greater numbers than supplied?"

"No sir," Alex said, "It's far more insidious than that."

"The missing four percent are being diverted to a terrorist organisation in Eastern Europe of which Madira Nova is… if not the head, then definitely involved high up in the organisation. Scirocco is well aware of this – is in fact attempting to use it to benefit his campaign to get the US to send troops to the area, something that he's been consistently denied," Monica said.

"He's running his own, somewhat less than savoury organisation to facilitate the arrangements between Nova's terrorist group and himself, probably with the involvement of at least one, if not several NSA or ATF agents both to keep himself a step removed from it, and to gather the evidence that he can take to the brass to get the strike into Eastern Europe authorised." Alex took over once again. "What he doesn't know, and could never have anticipated… Nova knows. He not only knows, but he's planning a counter strike against Scirocco and his people right here in the US, not to mention ensuring substandard weapons be provided to the military which could have catastrophic results for hundreds of American Soldiers… American families."

"You know this how?" Leggett asked, beginning to look more than a little troubled.

"Aside from the witness," Alex said softly, "sent to us by Donovan, Agent Shaw has just gone U/C inside Nova's organisation."


	4. Act 3

UC: Undercover If… As We Try – Act 3 

_I got transferred to work with the local nobodies of the FBI's CNU for the four years it took to investigate my conduct on the case, before they finally decided that my measures had been too extreme. Afterwards they gave me several choices but in the end, beaching myself seemed to be my best option. Oh I took their counselling. I've always been a great believer in talking things through, but along with the counselling, time away from anything and everything seemed good – it seemed right. It never happened._

_I was three hours away from the final review meeting that would have let me just walk away when it happened. All of America had been watching the news for weeks, watching the situation developing and then suddenly there it was, right in my face; walking right into my former boss' office._

"_Niall, any chance you could le—" The head of the FBI's Crisis Negotiation Unit stopped as soon as he saw that Leggett was not alone. To his credit he didn't let it phase him for more than a couple of seconds. Those couple of seconds came to be a significant margin of time later in our relationship. Then, though, he held out his hand. "Jim Turner, CNU."_

_I stood and took the offered handshake, "Frank Donovan."_

"_He's with me," Leggett was quick enough to interrupt our introduction. "He _was_ with me… looking for a new direction, matter of fact."_

_Turner raised his eyebrow, "Frank Donovan – that cracked the Eastern European gun syndicate?"_

_Leggett nodded as I stood impassive, trying not to feel uncomfortable with the accolade._

"_God, what I wouldn't give for a break like that." Turner said this into the air of the room and then turned to face me, and address me directly once more, "Could do with a man like you in my team, Donovan… if you're interested."_

_To this day I can't explain why I gave the answer I did. Sure I'd had all the training in negotiation as anyone in the company does. Standard procedure… and I'd seen enough of it in the last four years, but still, I had no business really talking the way I did; for the next few words out of my mouth._

"_Justus Township… you'll lose." The words came flying out._

"_Frank—" Leggett had a warning tone in his voice._

"_No, Niall, it's all right. Let the man speak. Can't do any worse than anyone so far." Turner held up his hand, and nodded at me encouragingly._

"_I know men like that," I told him and it was the truth. All of the people I'd been exposed to on the assignment that had all but ruined me as a man had been that type; Extremists… men who believe that only _their _reality is the true one. "You can't treat these men the way you have."_

_It was my turn to hold up my hand. I didn't want to insult anyone, and I did understand why they'd taken the approach they had. Everyone did – it had been thrown around in the news enough times._

"_I understand why, I do," I told him, "And there lies a big part of your problem… because so do they. I'm sure they watch the news like anyone else. _They_ know you don't want another Waco. It's a strength you're giving them. And you can't do that with people like the Freemen."_

_Leggett was looking worried, but Turner nodded. "Go on."_

"_You've given them too much already. You're showing weakness you can't afford… moved their man to Montana at their demand; sent in people who you think can get inside their heads because they're outside the establishment, but to them, all you're doing is demonstrating that weakness."_

"_All right," Turner said mildly, "supposing I agree with your assessment, what would you suggest is the _right _course of action?"_

"_You have to establish your strength. Send them a signal that you're there, and you're not going away, and that you're not going to capitulate." All of the things that I'd heard and read were going around and around in my head. It was disturbing, but unsurprising to me that in the thoughts I had as I tried to give Turner the answer he deserved, _I_ was one of those inside. "Undoubtedly there'll be leaders… men more fanatical than those that follow, still inside the compound. If you're going to get anywhere at all in this the first thing you have to do is isolate them. Right now you only have them contained."_

"_How?" Turner's exclamation was one of frustration, "You're talking about nine hundred and sixty acres and the threat of violence if we even set foot on the ranch uninvited."_

_I shook my head, "You don't _use_ force. You have to be more insidious than that; use their own segregation against them."_

"_What do you mean?" The question came from Leggett this time. He was sitting forward in his chair, almost hanging on my every word._

"_Right now, they're inside that compound ruling their followers with an almost iron fist… Almost…" I cupped my fist in my other hand to underline what I was saying. "Some of the families have already rebelled… perhaps recognised the hopelessness of their situation… perhaps they have a greater fear for their families, for their _children_ than they do of reprisals from their leaders."_

"_You're talking about the Stanters." Turner said._

_I nodded, "Those people have already left… already surrendered. We have to get to the others. Make them see that following blindly is only going to get them hurt, or worse, killed."_

"_Perhaps," Turner conceded after a moment or two of staring at me in uneasy silence, "But I don't see how we—"_

"_Two weeks." I said firmly. "Give me two weeks and I will end this."_

**UC CRIB: 8.30am June 6th**

"How long, Cody?" Alex handed a cup of coffee over her fellow agent's shoulder and pulled up another chair so that she could sit beside him as he worked. Behind them, Monica worked hard to put together the pieces of the profile on which she was working.

"Three or four hours," he answered glumly. "I want to start again from scratch; don't want to suddenly come across something those goons have put in place during a critical moment, you know?"

"Yeah." Alex sighed. "How 'bout you? How are _you_ doing?"

"Well, aside from having to rearrange my medicine cabinet to get in the extra meds, and having to reschedule my personal life, yet again…" he let his words trail off with a slight smile forming on his face.

"You have a date?" She couldn't keep the surprise out of her voice.

"Why is that so hard to believe?" he turned away from the computer screen and lowered his coffee cup to pierce her with an almost irritated stare. "And the verb is _had_, Alex. Past tense."

"You cancelled?"

"Rescheduled… doesn't anyone listen around here?"

Alex couldn't help smiling. This was the Cody she knew and loved. She'd worried over his despondent attitude, understandable though it was after all that had happened to him, and then on top of that, having to face, albeit from afar, the woman she was sure he'd once loved, who had betrayed him in the worst possible way. She'd worried that it would put him over the top. And to now discover he was dating…

"What?" Cody interrupted her thoughts.

"Just…" she squeezed his arm. "Don't suppose you'd answer if I asked how long?"

She also knew him well enough to know that he was almost obsessively private about anything meaningful in his life. It didn't change the fact that she was happy for him. When he shook his head, she just nodded, and smiled even more.

**NOVA-LUCAS TECHNOLOGIES HEADQUARTERS: 11am**

Jake turned his head one way and then the other, playing at being impressed for the sake of the two heavies who had bundled him into the car and brought him through the security checkpoint.

"And he said he wanted to see me?" he asked, trying his best to sound as though he was hopeful that this would lead to something good. "To see me here?"

"Why don't you shut up, and wait and see?" said one of the others.

Jake did, and went back to taking in as much as he could. There might come a time when he would need an escape route; would need to get out in a hurry, and it wouldn't help to turn the wrong way down a corridor.

He felt vulnerable without the presence of the team, even if they were only relayed through the implant in his ear… and he understood that it was necessary while Cody rebooted the system, but still… knowing he was on his own was a less than pleasant feeling.

"Wait here."

He nodded and stopped walking outside of a large oak door to a room that identified itself by a brass plaque as the 'conference room.' The company obviously had money. It was clear from the décor of what looked like solid wood panelling, the rich carpeting and the expensive technology that literally dripped from every corner of the room. He found he couldn't help glancing at the camera in the corridor and wishing yet again that Cody could be chattering away in his ear, reassuring him that he was 'on it," whatever _it_ might prove to be.

The door opened and he was ushered inside with an unceremonious grunt and beckoning gesture.

"Jacob," the man he'd met the day before yesterday got to his feet as Jake walked in, "I trust my associates treated you with respect."

"They were… all right," he answered haltingly, looking around him once more. Single door… secure room. He nodded. "They say you wish to speak with me."

"Straight to business then," Nova nodded. "I have a proposition for you."

"Oh?"

"I was very impressed with the work you did for me yesterday and find that I have… an opening in my organisation."

"I'm listening." Jake tried to infuse a hit of suspicion in his voice. Any friend of Ivan's, he thought, would be suspicious of such a sudden offer, especially given the nature of their meeting, and the nature of the job he'd been called on to do for the man the day before… to visit with a street-girl, and convince her that she would much rather work for Nova than for the thug that currently ran her. In truth he'd waited with the girl until her pimp showed up and simply taken both of them into custody. If Nova ever wanted to see the girl, they'd work out something later – no doubt involving Alex… he blinked to bring his focus back at the sound of Nova's voice.

"I understand your reticence," he said smoothly, "especially as I did not, after all, deliver on the promise of helping you to find Ivan, however…"

"If I have money," Jake snapped, "I don't need Ivan. If you give me job, I have money, yes?"

"Of course you'd be paid for your employment. What kind of organisation do you think I run here?"

Jake glanced at the two heavies, still standing one either side of the door, then back at Nova with a raised eyebrow.

"One where man needs bodyguards," he said, deadly serious, and thickening his false accent as much as he could.

Madeira Nova laughed.

"I like you, Jacob," he said. "I would really like you to… help out in that regard."

"What you need me to do?" Jake asked.

He caught the bundle that Nova suddenly tossed in his direction and quickly looked at the fist full of bills he now held. He looked up at Nova and whistled softly. "Is lot of money for doing nothing yet."

"Let's call it a retainer, shall we?" Nova asked, walking toward Jake's end of the table with a photograph in his hand.

"What is this – another retainer?" Jake nodded at the photograph.

Nova laughed again, "No, my friend, this is a photograph." He laid it onto the table. "This man is also an associate of mine… but he's… stuck… in the wrong place. I want you to find him… and bring him home."

"Living?" Jake asked.

The look that Nova gave him told Jake that was exactly the opposite from the way Nova wished to see the man. After a moment or two he nodded again.

"I will find this man," he said, and took up the photograph to stare at it for a very long time.

**LAPONTE 'HOTEL': 2.55pm**

Gareth glared at him from across the room. Frank could feel the cold radiating from the man. He did not look up; didn't feel like provoking the man again just yet. He simply continued to strip down and clean his handgun. That in itself, he thought, would be message enough.

He knew Gareth had a huge bruise along the side of his head where he'd used that handgun to pistol-whip the man into senselessness, and was sure that the bruise lower on the man's body was the only thing keeping Gareth from trying to tear his head off right now. In freeing the girl he'd only created more tension for himself and yet he wouldn't have it any other way. The man he'd become wouldn't allow an innocent to be sacrificed simply for the sake of preserving the cover of a hard nosed, cruel thug – for all of his refinement, that was exactly who he, Ivan, was.

"Whoa," Greg's voice was sarcastic as he returned with the takeout, "someone kill the A/C would ya?"

"Very funny," Gareth got up gingerly and came to snatch his food from Greg. Then he left the room, slamming the door behind him.

"What'd you two fight about anyway?" Greg asked as he handed Frank his meal.

"He took my girl," Frank said, nodding his thanks.

Greg pulled up a chair to the table and started on his own food. "You had to know he was gonna try."

"And _he_ had to know that I would protect what is mine." Frank looked up from his now reassembled weapon.

"So if she's so important to you," Greg looked around as he asked, "where is she?"

Frank shrugged. "Soiled goods… I have taken her to the downstairs."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"Man, remind me not to fuck with _you_ any time this century." Greg bit into his burger on the end of the sentence.

"Why are we still here?" Frank asked a few moments later, perhaps by taking the opening that had been presented to him he would be able to find out more about this side of the operation. Make friends with the man and then use him for gathering information… about Parken; about this 'general' whoever he was and about the plan they were quite obviously following. "We have finished our business with that other, we make ourselves vulnerable waiting here."

"This is Parken's show, Ivan," Greg paused in devouring his food to answer, "I don't ask questions… but I shouldn't worry. The place is safe. God himself couldn't even sneak one of his angels in here without Matt noticing."

Ivan's heart almost stopped. If they had surveillance, then they would have seen him getting the girl out, would _know_ he wasn't quite who they thought he was. He managed to keep his voice steady as he asked, "What do you mean?"

"It's where we were the other day. While you were having your little tête-à-tête with Gareth, Matt and me," Greg shrugged, "we hit the hardware store, the electronic place, scoring surveillance equipment. Guess that means Parken is planning on making this his base."

"And no one thought to tell me this!" Frank snapped, letting himself breathe again. It did little to comfort him though. He'd sent the girl to Cody, and they were no doubt pumping her for all the information she could give them of his whereabouts. Her information would be incomplete… worse than that… It could lead them into danger.

"It was on a need to know basis." Greg shrugged again.

"And still after all I have done for him Parken does not trust me, hmm?" Frank allowed all of the irritation he felt in that moment to come out in his voice. He slapped the tabletop, sending the cardboard containers of fries jumping to spill their contents. It would do him no good to contain the annoyance, to sit on it and seethe, let it cloud his judgement.

"Whoa, Ivan!" Greg held up a hand and then started to gather his spilled fries back into the box. "If it makes you feel any better, he didn't tell Gareth either."

"Not really," Frank said, still staring coldly at Greg.

"Well how about the fact he only told me because he needed someone to go with Matt?"

Frank thought about this for a moment, then nodded, and breathed deeply to calm himself. "Perhaps…" he started, "perhaps he simply did not think it needed to be said."

"Yeah," Greg agreed, "that's what I'm thinking."

Frank nodded, and started eating. He was in way over his head, and that was never clearer to him than now. He wasn't trusted, for all he'd said about the reason he wasn't told, he _knew_ he wasn't trusted. That meant that he couldn't just walk out of there and expect not to be followed; not to have his cover busted. On the other hand, there was a time in ever u/c sting to walk away; to simply get out and use the information you'd gathered to plan the take down, but takedown of what? He sighed. He did not have nearly enough information to lead him to the man at the top, and this was what Leggett wanted – in exchange for his team's safety. He had no choice but to stay and see this through to the bitter end.

_I spent the night – sleepless – reading through every single piece of paper in the record of the standoff. Field reports; transcripts; suspect interviews; even personal recollections, nothing escaped my notice. And in the morning before I went to the site I demanded to speak with everyone that had been anything to do with the siege. By the time I got to the FBI Ops site, a home that formerly belonged to a Freeman family before foreclosure, that stood two miles away from the so-called 'Justus Township' I already had a strategy in my head. It was extreme, but it was the only set of actions that would give us resolution of the standoff in the way we wanted – without bloodshed._

_I started talking even before Turner had introduced me to the on site team. Picking out team members at random and giving them orders. "You - get the press out of here. Tell them whatever you have to to get them to stop whining about their constitutional rights, but they need to be at least two miles outside of the vicinity of the compound."_

_I turned to the man sitting at a bank of monitors. "You - once they're out, get your tech-ops team to run an interference signal that will cut off all radio, television and cellular reception except for ours."_

_Then I found a youngster that looked as much like a rookie as ever I'd seen, "You - get portable generators to us here, and into the neighbouring farms and ranches, and then get the power company to discontinue supply to this area."_

_Finally I spoke to an agent in a vest, a man that was bristling with weapons, "You - make our presence obvious. Let's get a couple of ATV's in here… and helicopters. I want to increase air surveillance, and I want to use helicopters to do it."_

_Only then did anyone object. "Who the hell _is_ this guy?"_

"_I'm the man that's going to break this siege and get those people out of there," I said before Turner could open his mouth to answer. In what was to become something of a trademark for me in those early days I took out my ID and showed it around so everyone could take a look at the authority I carried and said, "It doesn't matter that we don't know each other we're not going to be sleeping together. My name is Donovan and from now on, you need to sneeze, you clear it with me."_

_I gave them a moment or two to let it sink in then snapped, "All right people, why are we still standing here? You all have your assignments, now go!"_

_It took them a couple of days to do everything I'd instructed, but that was just fine in my estimation. It gave me time to observe the scene, and to have more interviews with people who had once been inside the compound but had surrendered themselves to authorities – to find out that I was right – that it had been fear of what ultimately might happen to their families._

_The Stanters told me of another family, Wardell by name, who had wanted to leave, but who'd been coerced into staying… it gave me another lever… another way closer to the isolation of the men inside that were calling themselves the leaders; Flanders, Macobi, and Skedell… and I threw that straight to the profilers to get me inside their heads. It was a slow process, and it required patience and balls – because all the time the Freemen were issuing demands and making subtle threats, and the brass were demanding explanations and expecting some kind of action – but I had both in abundance and wouldn't be swayed from my purpose. I knew most of the action would come in the second of the weeks I'd asked for._

_By day six of my operation, they finally cut the power to the compound, and I composed my note to Flanders and Skedell. It was simple, it was uncompromising. "When you are ready negotiate, release the Wardells. There will be no further communication until that happens. You have twelve hours."_

_I did not name what would happen if they did not. It was a gamble to re-establish a certain level of control that had been relinquished by the previous negotiation tactics, even while knowing that in circumstances like these, I was not in control. The Freemen were._

_Twelve hours later, with no movement from the compound, I moved in the second helicopter, the one I'd been keeping in reserve, and moved the ATVs just that little bit closer as count of days moved from seven to eight – the seventy fifth day of the standoff._

_On June sixth, almost twenty-four hours after I sent in the helicopter and ATVs the Wardells and their two children were driven from the compound by Macobi. Our face to face meeting was brief, only as long as it took for the family to transfer to an FBI fleet car._

"_Finally," he said, "one of you with balls."_

"_You better believe it." I answered. "I'll speak with Flanders and Skedell. We can meet to discuss the terms of your surrender."_

"_A bit ahead of yourself, Fed."_

_I shook my head. "You have no communication with the outside world; no power; your own people are turning from you and very soon I'm going to have no choice but to send in the forces that I have on standby."_

"_You wouldn't—"_

"_One thing you should know about me, Macobi – I don't bluff." I waited a heartbeat. "It's time, Freeman. Tomorrow – noon – I'll speak with Flanders and Skedell."_

_I turned my back on him then to walk to my own car, signalling to the others to move off as I did so._

**UC CRIB: 3.25pm**

"So you're still working on his file?"

Cody turned his head at the slight chuckle that came from Niall Leggett as he slipped into the seat beside him.

"You can crack the DOD firewall, but you still can't decrypt one little file?"

"Don't suppose you'd care to give me the key?" Cody gave him a lopsided, sarcastic grimace of a smile, and then looked down at the envelope that Leggett was sliding across the desk toward him. "What's that?"

Leggett shrugged, but still didn't take his hand away from the envelope. "Compensation?"

Cody raised an eyebrow. "So I'm close… and you don't want me to get there."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to. Do I look stupid to you?"

"You're wrong, Agent Faulkner."

"Something else then," Cody said, "something you don't want me stumbling on while we investigate this case. I can respect that. But you needn't worry, Agent Leggett, I can be discrete. You'd be surprised how much classified material I come across while sitting at _my_ computers."

"I don't doubt that," the other man nodded, "not for a minute."

Cody turned to look him full in the face and said slowly, "Then why don't you… take your 'compensation' and—"

"You'd be making a big mistake, Agent Faulkner."

"I'll take my chances," he said coldly, "You can't tie my hands if you want us to crack this case; find the evidence you need to take this mole down."

"Wouldn't dream of tying your hands… Cody," Leggett said, "And as I said, you're wrong. I'm not trying to dissuade you from _any_ line of investigation in this case. My motives are genuine. You were badly treated and I feel responsible – so – I come to you with compensation… of sorts. Something that I know you've wanted to know for a very long time."

Cody frowned in confusion and looked from Leggett's face to the envelope a couple of times.

"I know you and your team still see me as the bad guy in all of this," Leggett continued, "but I want to see this case at an end and Donovan home safely as much as all of you. Let's just say… I know certain things in this case have been… difficult for you, and could be a distraction… so…"

He nodded toward the envelope, and then got up to leave. Cody turned in his seat to watch him, frowning and wondering what the hell just happened. Just as he was about to turn back to the computer, to make yet another attempt on Frank's file, Leggett spoke from the doorway.

"And by the way, Agent Faulkner, "you already _have_ the key."

Cody's frown deepened, and he turned back to the doorway, to ask Leggett what he meant, but the man had already left.

"What was all that about?" Monica asked from the stairway to Donovan's office. He couldn't help but wonder how long she'd been there.

"Be damned if _I _know," he said.

"So, you gonna look at it?" she nodded toward the envelope. He shrugged. "You can't tell me you're not curious."

"Sure I'm curious," he said with a frown, "but we have more important things to worry about and he doesn't know me at all if he thinks that I'd let myself be 'distracted' by anything."

Monica nodded, and slipped into the seat beside the large display monitor as the others began to file into the room.

"So what have we got?" Jake asked as he took his own place.

Cody smiled a little thinking it was almost like old times. Good times…

"His name," Monica began, bringing up the scan of the photograph that Jake had brought them, along side a wrap sheet for the man, "is Gareth Walsh. He has prior for ABH, GBH, aggravated burglary and attempted armed robbery, among other violent crimes."

"Nice guy," Jake punctuated her profile, obviously reading ahead on the list of convictions.

Monica nodded, "Oh yeah, just the kind of guy you want to take home to meet your momma. Threatened by rival masculinity, needing to dominate and possess and uncompromising in pursuit of that… supremacy… let's say. He was all set to spend the rest of his natural behind bars, having been denied parole on two previous occasions. Then we suddenly find an R-99 coding on his last parole application and 'bingo' the man's out… From what we can tell, employed under the parole board employment scheme as a driver for Nova-Lucas Technologies – where have we heard _that_ name before, guys? But it all checks out and is apparently all above board."

"Hang on," Alex cut in, "What's a man with that kind of wrap sheet doing working for a company involved in the manufacture of weapons."

"Good question and one I asked the employment office not two hours ago." Monica said, pointing at Alex as she spoke. "According to the woman I spoke with he drove for one of the executive board and had nothing at all to do with delivery or transportation of the company's goods. That and the R-99—"

"You're telling us he drove for Nova." Jake as much stated as asked.

Monica nodded, "Exactly."

As the team started to speculate back and forth on just the kind of things that Walsh could have been exposed to as Nova's driver and why it was that Nova so badly wanted him out of the way, Cody began, almost idly, to input the ASCII equivalent of Donovan's badge number into the cipher key on the file. It had been bugging him since the other night, as the girl Frank had sent to them stood reciting the number on his doorstep, but he'd put it out of his mind. Only now, the mention of R-99 codings and Leggett's assertion that he already _had_ the key had pulled it once more to the fore.

Usually, a government agent's badge number would change as they were assigned to a new department, when seniority or payment coding would subtly change the numbers or letters. His own, for example, UTC99876312, told those in the know exactly what department, pay scale and level of command seniority he'd reached when he took up his current assignment.

Donovan's hadn't changed. He was still prefixed 'Classified – Mandate of pResident.' When he joined their team Cody would have expected the prefix at least to be replaced by either SOC or as his own and Jakes and the other members of the team, UTC – Undercover, Technical and Communications.

"I'm playing a hunch here," Jake was saying, "but if we showed that photograph to the girl, what do you want to bet that she knows him?"

"Which presumably means that Nova wants him killed to stop something that he knows—?"

The computer bleeped.

"Hello!" Cody exclaimed, and suddenly leaned forward in his chair as the pages in Frank's file started to scroll onto the screen. The others crowded around him.

"Whoa, Cody," Alex said, "what did you do?"

"Followed a lead," he said slowly, frowning slightly, "that just got put into my head."

"What do you mean?" Monica asked, frowning too.

He shook his head, "Doesn't matter, it just came to me. What matters is we can finally see what this is all about."

As the others started to read through the file, he slowly picked up the envelope from beside the keyboard, and slipped it into his pocket.

_It took them until the following day to come to the gate, demanding to speak with the FBI's negotiator, and it took me a further two hours of arguing with Turner about seniority. He'd gotten nervous. Though he couldn't deny the albeit small successes I'd had so far, he was worried about me continuing actual negotiations with these people… wanted to put in a more experienced agent._

"_Turner, listen to me," I grasped his arm, "all your experienced agents have managed to do so far is capitulate to every demand they made and let them ensconce themselves in the powerful position they were in nine days ago. In _nine_ days I have undone months of damage done by incompetent negotiating tactics and pussy-footing around."_

"_Frank—"_

"_No, Turner… if you don't trust me, come with me, but you _have_ to let me finish this."_

_Turner stared at me for a full two seconds – those significant two seconds and finally we left the farmhouse and drove the two miles to the gate of the Freemen's compound._

"_Took your time," Skedell complained._

"_I won't rush, or be pushed to rush," I told them both in answer and warning. "I'm prepared to negotiate, but you still have women and children inside."_

"_We're not letting no more people out." Skedell snapped._

"_Then we have nothing to talk about." I sighed softly, and turned around to leave._

"_We need fresh food, and water." Flanders called out after me. "We ran out of fuel for our generator and the meat in the freezer went bad. Water in Justus Township comes from a well pumped up by electricity."_

_I turned back to face him, and nodded, "I'll see what I can do."_

"_Then we'll see what we can do about the kid and his mother."_

"_All right." I looked between the two of them, "We need a place to resume negotiations. All very well coming to meet at the gate, but it doesn't let us sit down at the bargaining table."_

"_We ain't coming out!" Skedell snapped, clearly ragged at the edges. "Don't trust ya."_

"_Fair enough," I conceded that, "Let me set up a field operations tent in that pasture over there and I'll bring in… twenty litres of water, and hot ration packs for everyone inside. We can talk about the boy and his mother."_

"_Forty litres," Flanders haggled, "And toilet paper… we're out of that too."_

"_Thirty," I said, "and toilet paper."_

_After a moment or two Flanders nodded, "All right, thirty… and you set up your tent over there," he nodded toward the edge of a pasture near the gate, "with a direct line to your command centre. You must have communications even if we don't."_

"_Agreed," I told him at once, and turned away to set in motion the _enormous_ step forward that we'd just taken._

_Took us the better part of the rest of the day to get everything organised, and Turner insisted that the team erecting the tent and the tech-ops installing the electronics did so under armed guard. I suppose it was a sensible precaution in the end, though at the time it made me nervous._

_I got no sense from Flanders that he'd allow anyone to fire on the agents, but Skedell was a different matter. I worried that a show of weapons, so close, and on 'his' territory would put him over the edge. I wanted him close, but not across that line. I worried without cause, and the next day Turner, Skedell, Flanders, Macobi and I all sat down together at a table inside the tent to recommence our negotiations._

_You never say the word 'no' it's one of the first things that you're taught as a negotiator, and it's something that so many negotiators forget. There are a lot of ways you can say no without saying the actual word, and men as sharp as Flanders obviously was would easily recognise this. I knew I had my work cut out, but there are also a lot of way that you can turn a no around, and make your refusal the other party's fault. Offers and counter offers._

"_We need power. We're living in unsanitary conditions without it; can't even flush the toilets. We need to be able to eat and drink."_

"_I'll need to see the boy and his mother walk out of here before I can consider that." I told them._

"_They ain't leaving." Skedell said._

"_That's your choice." I told them. "An unfortunate one, but it's your choice."_

"_So you want us all to get sick," Macobi accused, "in the hopes that'll flush us out seeking medicine?"_

"_I didn't say that." I corrected, phrasing my words carefully, it wouldn't do to be seen to have lied, further down the line. "I said I needed to see the boy and his mother walk out of here before I could consider the question of providing you with power. I'll have four chemical toilets provided for you, for the sake of sanitation."_

"_So what, you gonna starve us out?" Skedell asked._

"_So long as negotiations continue and contact between us remains civil I'm prepared to provide daily ration packs and water. You won't starve."_

"_We need to be able to speak with our leaders." Flanders added. "All very well we come to the negotiating table, but we're only in charge here because Schmitz and Peters got arrested."_

"_I understand that," I told him, treading carefully. "And again, we can talk about that once the boy is out."_

"_We both have a lot to think about," Flanders said, his voice clipped._

"_Agreed," I said. "I'm sure you want to talk among yourselves. Let me go and arrange for the sanitation equipment, and the water and rations… I'll have them delivered before dusk."_

_I stood up and left. As we got into my car Turner said incredulously, "That's _all_ you're gonna do? You _had_ them man… eating out of your hand."_

"_No," I said, and shook my head. "I was establishing the rules of negotiation with them, nothing more; letting them know that they can't push me around as they have the others. If I try to go too fast, that will not sink in with them. Their next step will be to test the rules."_

"_And then?"_

"_Then we show them the consequences for their non-co-operation."_

"_Frank," Turner warned, "We _can't _use force. We were told no bloodshed."_

"_Turner," I stopped the car by the side of the road and tilted my head at him. "You can make a show of force without ever spilling even a drop of blood."_

**RESIDENCE – FRANK AND SARAN DONOVAN: 6.30pm**

Monica squeezed her hand again trying to reassure the woman that everything would be all right, though she too was beginning to wonder at the delay.

"They're not coming, are they?" Saran asked, her hand trembling in Monica's.

"Of course they are. I'm sure it's just traffic. It's a bitch at this time of day in the centre, you know that," she said.

"Yeah," Saran did not sound convinced. She reached out for the soft toy that sat forlornly on the edge of the couch and held it close. "She misses me, Monica. Those visits… when I have to leave… I'll never, _never_ get the sound of those screams out of my mind."

"Time heals a lot of things, Saran." Monica said, but the other woman shook her head.

"Not this, Monica. Not this."

"Just…" Monica sighed and tried again, "Just promise me one thing, hmm?"

Saran looked up at her, "What?"

"Promise me you won't blame Frank for any of this?"

Saran shook her head again, "I could never do that. I wouldn't ever blame him for _anything_. And after what you guys have told me how could I blame a man like that for trying to protect his friends; his family?"

Monica nodded, satisfied of the truth of what Saran said.

Both women jumped at the sound of the doorbell, and then Monica smiled an I-told-you-so smile as Saran went to let in the social worker that was returning her daughter.

"Here's momma's little angel," she said as she took Alethea from the other woman's arms.

"Mamma," the girl threw her arms around her mother and clung to her as though she thought that she'd disappear at any moment.

It took Monica all her self control not to be moved to tears at the reunion. The social worker nodded respectfully in her direction and said quietly, "Agent Davies."

"Just here to make sure everything goes smoothly," she answered.

"I assure you, everything is fine. Mr Leggett cleared up the misunderstanding."

"I'll bet he did."

"Please," Saran interrupted, "I don't want any more argument about all of this. I'd like to just get everything back to normal. It's almost dinner time, and Alethea needs to be fed."

"Of course," the social worker said. "You have our number if you need anything."

She showed herself out, although Monica closed the door behind her as Saran made her way to the kitchen.

"You're welcome to stay for dinner if you'd like?"

"Thanks, but I think you and 'Thea," she used the pet name that Donovan always called his daughter, "need some alone time."

Saran paused in the kitchen doorway. "Thanks, Monica… for everything."

Monica just shook her head, and a moment or two later headed homeward. It had been a _long_ day.

**UNDISCLOSED LOCATION: 6.50pm **

He answered the cell phone within two rings. "Yes."

"Everything's in place, sir. The woman just left."

"Excellent." He leaned back in his chair and smiled. It was a cold smile, the art of hiding it was something he'd perfected, and to allow himself its expression was a personal indulgence.

"What are your orders?"

"For now, just sit tight." Much as a part of him might want to act on his desire to punish his enemies, there was no sense in eliminating a lever that might prove to be useful in the future. "If anything should occur that necessitates any further direct action, I will send you the coded message."

"Understood."

He disconnected the call as efficiently as he had answered it.

**RESIDENCE – CODY FAULKNER: 9.12pm**

Cody straightened up from putting the dishes into the dishwasher, yawned and stretched, grimacing on the end of the stretch as his back pulled a little. Sometimes he wondered if he'd ever feel right again. So much had happened so quickly that he'd had little time to process it.

"So what else is new?" he asked into the empty apartment.

Turning off the kitchen light he padded toward the reclining chair in the living room. Far from avoiding the couch as he usually did, he actually glance in its direction and smiled. Then he shook his head as he sat down and reclined the seat. It had been a long day and he was tired, but it was way too early for the night owl that he was to try sleeping. His mind was buzzing through a million things, as usual, so it was futile for him to even try. He thought perhaps a little mindless television would help to quiet him down and reached for the remote without looking. As he did his fingers rustled against the envelope he'd brought home from the Crib.

Quickly he snatched his hand away, almost as though it had been burned. He refused to be baited by what he was sure was an attempt to distract him from the case; from the information they had which his mind was trying hard to analyse – to find leads. He had no real evidence to back up his suspicion, but thought that almost any member of the team would agree that Leggett had made inappropriate advances that afternoon. Quite obviously he wanted Donovan and his team to fail.

If he was honest with himself, he was almost terrified of what he might find inside that envelope.

He closed his eyes for a moment, forcing himself to recall all of the things in the past couple of days that had struck him as important. What did they know? Donovan was undercover as Ivan Lebiscowski – an identity drawn from his own classified past. He was involved with a criminal organisation, sponsored, if not controlled by high ranking military and government agents, running girls and bogus arms deals with an equally bogus manufacturing company, Nova-Lucas Technologies. Gareth Walsh, formerly a driver for Madeira Nova, an executive of that company, was now – apparently – working for the criminal organisation, this following his release on parole from federal prison on an R-99 coding. There he stopped cold.

"No way," he told himself aloud.

Few government agents had the authority to issue those R-99 codes… _top_ government agents… whose classification was by Presidential Mandate.

"He wouldn't…"

Still shaking his head as he went he headed for the office and quickly booted the bank of computers.

"_Good Evening, Cody. You have mail."_ The computer's 'voice' went some way to calming the overloud thud of his heartbeat in his ears. Quickly he logged into the mainframe at the Crib and pulled up the copies of the documents they had from the prison, scanning for the R-99 four figure authorisation. 'X207'

He breathed an audible sigh of relief and laid his forehead on the desk for a second or two. It wasn't Frank. If it was it would have returned an eight four eight authorisation code.

But if not Frank, then who? Who else might have a vested interest in making sure things went his way?

For just a moment he thought of once more trying to break into the Department of Defence mainframe and download a list of R-99 authorised agents… it wasn't an entirely ridiculous notion, after all, he'd done it before. But he'd been desperate before; desperate and hurting. Audacious he might be, but stupid was something he definitely was _not._ There was no way that he'd get that list, even if he could get into the DOD mainframe again… was there? And even if he did, _and_ got the list, it would probably only lead him to the General anyway. He was the most obvious suspect, the one with the most to gain and who was already playing both ends against the middle. Why not spice it up by having his own 'double agent?'

But something niggled at him… perhaps it was _because_ that was so obvious that he wanted to reject it… and suddenly wanted to see what was inside the envelope.

He rolled the chair back toward the door, standing up from it as he went to get the envelope before he changed his mind again. Quickly he tore it open and snatched out the contents. He almost dropped them again as he read Michelle's name atop what were obviously medical records from a Women's Hospital in downtown Chicago, but morbid curiosity made him read on, skimming over the first page which was little more than an inventory for the purposes of her insurance company.

"Would have been a girl," he whispered as he read the papers. "My little girl…"

Almost defeated, he sat down on the corner of the recliner, head in one hand, staring at the piece of paper then he suddenly growled in anger.

"…over and done. I _knew_ it was a distraction, I—"

As he closed the papers angrily he spotted something that stopped his anger in its tracks.

Any of the others might have missed it. But he'd often enough had to find missing agents; discover if they'd been injured in the course of duty and were unable to call in, and searching hospital records databases for the government HMO was the fastest way of doing it. There, on the coversheet of Michelle's records, almost highlighted for him now was the familiar six digit code.

"Holy shit!" he breathed, and made his way shakily back to the computers.

Maybe there was a simple explanation for this. It had been his baby after all. Perhaps she'd given them _his_ insurance details. He quickly logged into the HMO computer and accessed his account, scanning back for the date that was on the medical records he still held in his hand. Nothing.

His hands actually shook as he entered the reference number on the Medical records into the HMO and waited for the hit to return results. When they did it chilled his blood even more.

"_Record Locked"_

Quickly he typed in the unlock protocol and his own T-99 authorisation code. It should have given him access. It did to all but the most sensitive of information.

"_Access Denied: Please enter R-99 access code."_

"You have got to be kidding me," he said to the screen, and typed 'X207' on that screen, also turning to another, and linking it to the first, opened the algorithm program that would give him a chance of finding the password that he was sure would be demanded when he hit enter.

Sure enough the HMO screen returned, _"Password:?"_

He set the algorithm program running, and sat back in his chair, his head starting to pound with a terrible ache right behind his eyes.

"May have been meant as a distraction, you bastard," he said as he waited, but never finished the sentence. Instead, with the third computer, he accessed the records of the SWAT sting against Donovan's house and the Crib; his own OPR review and arrest record and the authorisations for return to duty of the team.

The computer bleeped, and the screen that was logged into the HMO mainframe changed to show the service record of a former low ranking government agent.

"Bitch!" he spat.

"_You never talk to me any more… not even about your day at work."_

What better way to spy on Donovan than put a deep cover agent in with one of his team? Whoever X207 turned out to be – and he had a pretty good idea who that might be – he certainly wanted to take Frank Donovan down.

Fighting tears of frustration, coupled with foolishness and simple hurt he printed all of the evidence and slipped it into an envelope, before shutting down the computers and heading to the medicine cabinet to get something for his head. He was half way across the living room when the phone rang.

"Hey… I'm not calling too late, am I?"

"Hey, Sunshine," he smiled in spite of himself, "man, am I glad to hear your voice."

"What's wrong?"

"Ah, just…" _you never talk to me any more_ "…work stuff. Rough day."

"You sure, Lover? You sound so down."

Cody sighed, "Something happened, got me thinking about Michelle." He wished he could just spill everything he'd just learned, lean on his partner in the way he wanted and to hell with running him for clearance.

"I was thinking…"

"Yeah?"

"How would it be if I came over one day and redecorated your apartment for you? Get rid of those old memories."

"You'd do that?" Cody asked.

"Sure I would."

"Cause I _hate_ the way this place looks!" he surprised himself with the vehemence in his voice. He knew it was a reaction to what he'd just learned, but it was still a shock.

"Whoa, Cody… maybe I should just come over."

"You don't have to do that."

"I know I don't _have_ to."

"You sure?" Cody tried to put a smile into the question.

"Sure I'm sure. I'll be right over."

_And so the time came for my show of force when the following day, state legislators received a signed letter warning of possible liens against them unless a Grand Jury Enquiry was entered into concerning our actions at the compound. I'd expected something like that, so it came as no surprise. All I had to do was to decide what _I_ was going to do. How I'd make that show of force._

_In the end I ordered all Freemen already under lock and key to be placed in solitary confinement; withdrew the sanitation facilities that I'd provided, and made sure that the expected morning meals were never delivered. I also went in personally with a tech-op team to take out the direct line with our command post… noting well the truck speeding towards the pasture._

"_Wait! Wait!" Flanders and Macobi jumped out of the truck almost before it was at a standstill. "What are you doing?"_

"_It isn't a matter of what I'm doing, but what _you_ have done with your little stunt today." I turned to face them as the tech-op team continued their work. "You've tied my hands, Flanders. I've been more than reasonable with you, but now you don't leave me any choice. This is going to end one of two ways. Either you surrender your position here and come out quietly, or we come in here like the wrath of God. It's _your_ choice; your decision. When you've made up your minds, then we can talk."_

_I turned and left with the tech-ops in tow. Inside of two hours there was a note tied to the gate, and I returned to the tent, that was now little more than a shell._

"_We don't have the authority to negotiate the terms of our surrender," Flanders said as soon as I set foot inside. "We'll need to confer with our leaders."_

"_All right," I nodded. "Tomorrow morning I'll take you and Macobi out to meet with them."_

"_It should be Skedell and me," he argued._

"_Wrath of God, Flanders," I said softly, and reluctantly he agreed._

"_Why wait until tomorrow?" Turner demanded as I told them of the arrangements. "Why not do it today?"_

"_Because those lawyers from the Waco families won't be here until tomorrow." I said._

"_You can't seriously be considering letting them _speak_ to these guys?"_

"_Macobi and Flanders, no," I said, "but Skedell and the others, yes. Skedell is on the brink… his former injuries make him vulnerable; leave him susceptible to extreme suggestions. If he sees first hand what happened to those people, if they _all_ see what might happen if their leaders don't make the right decision, human psychology says they will take the decision _out_ of their leader's hands. They _will_ surrender."_

"_You're taking one hell of a gamble, Frank."_

"_No." I looked him straight in the face. "I'm negotiating a settlement."_

_He accepted that, "All right, so you take them out of there, drive them to Yellowstone to talk with Schmitz—"_

"_Forget Schmitz," I told him. "You put him in a position of power when you capitulated to their demands to move him to Montana. No, I mean to fly them out to Peters."_

_Evidently he thought about that. "All right."_

"_You're going with them. I'm staying here to see to the final stages of the negotiation. Your job is to stall them for as long as you can. Treat them with courtesy, but don't give in to any ridiculous demands they might have. Never. Leave them. Alone with Peters. I can't stress that enough. You tell them it's an open negotiation, both sides… cards on the table. When I have the others out, you'll be handed a piece of paper by one of the prison warders. You end the negotiations for the day, bring them out of the prison, we arrest them."_

"_And if the others don't surrender?"_

"_The others have no choice." I said firmly._

_I didn't sleep much that night. It wasn't that I didn't trust my plan. In my mind there was no way it could fail. It's just that I kept going over and over all the things that needed to be done and to be said. You can't go half prepared into a final negotiation that way. If you do, you're weak, and if you're weak, you lose._

_Nature created it that way – survival of the fittest._

**UC CRIB: 10.03am June 7th**

"I don't know that I like Agent Cross going U/C with this man." Leggett said softly.

"The only other choice we have is to blow the case." Jake told him, trying not to get irritated in having to explain, "We're nowhere near ready for a takedown. I was supposed to have taken out her pimp, and persuaded her that working for Nova was in her best interest. If she doesn't show… he's going to know that something's not right. He's not stupid."

"Agent?" Leggett turned to look at Alex.

"Has he actually met this woman? Seen her?" she asked Jake.

He shook his head, "Only the photograph. It was taken by one of his heavies. So long as you don't let _them_ get too close, you'll be fine. You've spoken with the woman, you know what she's like and Monica's given you a full profile, as usual. Let's not get nervous just because Donovan's not here to ask—"

"You all right with this, Alex?" Cody cut in. His head was still aching from the weight of everything he had inside it and the stress of maintaining his usual professional front.

"I'll have back up, right?" she asked.

Cody got up from his place at the computer and came to her with a small case in his hands. Getting to her side he opened the case and said softy, "I'll be with you every step of the way, Alex. I wouldn't let anything happen to you."

She nodded, and let him set about fitting her with the technology they'd need for him to deliver on that promise.

**LAPONTE 'HOTEL': 12.05pm**

"All right," Jake turned to Cody as they got prepared in the back of the van. "You gonna explain to me now why we couldn't do this from the Crib?"

"I wanted us to be on hand in case anything… went AWOL, Jake, is that so bad?" Cody snapped.

"Nothing is going to go wrong, Cody," Monica ran her hand across his shoulders, noting the tension there and frowning slightly. She began to worry he had taken a backward step or two in the healing process after what happened to him inside. He sighed at her touch. "All right, baby?"

He sighed again, "Sorry, I'm just… on edge."

"Would it make you feel better if I wore a vest?" Jake asked, exchanging a worried frown with Monica.

"No," Cody told him with a hint of an exasperated sigh, "doesn't mean you shouldn't wear one though."

"Okay," Jake pulled a vest out of the rack and put it on under his jacket. "See, wearing vest."

"Thank you," Cody nodded and flipped on the systems as Jake announced he was going out and left the van.

"You want to talk about it?" Monica asked Cody as he ran though his systems check with Jake. "You get your results yet?"

"Yeah, days ago," Cody ran a hand over his face, "I'm clear."

"Well that's great news," she said with a smile, but Cody didn't crack a grin.

"Yeah," he said.

"Cody," she tried, "You had the ART as a precaution, you've got a clear test, you'll be fine."

"It's not that, Monica."

"You had a fight with your man?"

"No," he chuckled slightly, and then asked, "How did you know?"

"It's my job to know, Cody," she told him, but when he raised his eyebrow, she added, "You don't remember worrying about what he'd say when I took you to the hospital after you got out of jail?"

"Right…" he nodded. "I just… got a lot on my mind. I want to get Frank _out_ of this."

"We all want that, Cody," she told him earnestly.

"_You guys are concentrating in there, right? Only I've been getting dead air for the past five minutes."_

Jake's voice came from the speaker, and Cody keyed the mic active. "We hear you, Jake and you've only been out for… three minutes and forty seconds, so how could it have been dead air for that long?"

"_Wise guy."_

"You'd be in trouble if I weren't." Cody answered, and knowing that any further conversation would have to wait until after the sting, Monica turned her attention to the monitors.

"Wait… wait!" she said suddenly, leaning forward to look at one of the screens. "Cody is that what I think it is?"

Cody made the few keystrokes necessary to zoom in the view.

"Oh crap!" he said. "See, I _told_ you I should have done a walkthrough before we sent Jake in there."

"_What's the problem, Cody?"_

To his credit, Monica saw that Jake had flattened himself against a wall behind cover.

"We've got surveillance. They must have put it in after the girl got out."

"_Don't sweat it,"_ Jake sounded as collected as he usually was, _"Just get me past it. Get me to the control room."_

"Give me a second," Cody said and turned on another screen, running a device atop the van that would locate all of the cameras in the hotel's grounds and the building itself. "All right…"

Monica tuned out the sound of Cody's voice guiding Jake around the security, and concentrated instead on watching the remaining monitors for any 'human surveillance' that might happen upon their covert operation.

Jake moved from place to place, carefully following Cody's instructions to the letter, knowing that any deviation would tip those inside to his arrival, and turn what could be a simple operation into a bloodbath.

All their intelligence told him that Frank was somewhere inside the building, unable to leave the organisation without arousing too much suspicion and blowing the case. Jake meant to give him a way out… a way to come home… as well as taking Walsh, to interrogate him to find out who he's working for, and on what agenda.

"_Almost there, Jake,"_ Cody's voice reassured him that nothing was going to go wrong. _"Stay close to the building as you go around the corner, camera will be right above your head. Stand still until I tell you to move. You'll have ten point three seconds to get through the door that will be right ahead of you."_

"And if it's locked?"

"_You'll have ten point three seconds to _pick_ the lock and get through the door that will be right ahead of you."_

"Gee," Jake said under his breath, "Aren't _you_ a bundle of sunshine?"

"_I heard that."_

Jake carefully slipped around the corner, looking up at the camera that was fixed to the wall, and freezing, listening to Cody breathing, and waiting for the go. When it came he exploded into motion, sprinting toward the door, and counting under his breath. His heart sank as he tried the door and found that it was, indeed, locked.

"Tell me there's a blind spot," he begged Cody as he pulled the picks from his jacket pocket and started working on the lock.

"_That's a negative, Jake,"_ Cody told him, _"Four seconds… three…."_

Jake held his breath and finally felt his pick engage and flip the final tumbler on the lock. For just a heartbeat he started worrying about the possibility of bolts on the opposite side, but then the door yielded and he slipped through, blinking at the change of light.

"_Do me a favour,"_ Monica's voice this time, _"Don't cut it that fine again?"_

"_Not my idea of fun either."_

"I see a camera," Jake told them both, his voice barely above a whisper, "but it's pointed down the corridor behind the stairs to my left."

"_Control room is dead ahead. Keep your eye on that Camera, if you think it's gonna catch you climb to stair six – repeat, the sixth step of the staircase. This one has a blind spot."_

For the sake of safety, and needing to catch his breath from the close call before, Jake walked up to the sixth step and flattened himself against it until he was sure the camera had turned again, then he made his way quickly to control room door and pushed it open.

"Damn it, Greg, about ti— what the—?"

Without the time for finesse, Jake cracked the man aside the head with the butt of his gun, dropping him, unconscious, to the ground. He pulled off the man's cheap, brown leather belt and used it to tie his hands, before standing and looking at the monitors.

"You guys getting this?"

"_We see it, Jake."_

"There's no _way_ I'm gonna reach Frank without having to use my gun."

"_Act like you belong," _Monica told him. _"You know what the girl said. This place isn't much more than an expensive brothel. And you're a red blooded man."_

"Very funny," Jake told her.

"_Just get one of the girls to take you upstairs,"_ Cody said, _"Once you're off that first floor, plain sailing all the way. Doesn't matter about surveillance, you've taken the guy out."_

"_Think of it this way," _Monica's cheery voice told him that she was about to make some kind of terrible joke,_ "It'll give you something to talk about at confession on Sunday."_

"Remind me to cross you off my Christmas card list, Monica," he said equally as cheerily as he headed out.

"_You mean I was on it in the first place?"_

Frank was pacing. It had gone from bad to worse in a single day as Parken moved in more than a dozen other men and was obviously preparing for something. Something big.

"Relax, Ivan," Greg said, getting up, to go and head down and take his turn monitoring surveillance. "You're like a caged tiger. You'll get your chance. Don't think I missed the way you snarled at that Nova guy."

On the other side of the room, Gareth grumbled under his breath… he was evidently irritated at the apparent camaraderie between Ivan and Greg, who had once been _his_ friend.

Making connections even as he spoke, Frank fixed a confused expression onto his face. "Mister Nova is Parken's business associate. Why should I—?"

Greg chuckled, "Let's just say… business is… _booming_?"

Greg opened the door in the next moment. He stood for a split second with an almost shocked expression on his face, then slammed the door and scrambled back, drawing his gun.

"Get back!" he yelled as the door exploded inward.

Instinct had Donovan draw his own gun and point it into the doorway even as Greg took a shot. The dark shape that had rushed through had ducked to the side though and Greg's shot went wide.

"Put em down!" a familiar voice, using an unfamiliar accent had him relax his finger on the trigger of his gun, though not by much. Jake's gun was pointing right at his head, as he was now aiming at Jake's, only Jake's finger was tighter on the trigger. "Put em down or I shoot your friend!"

"Go ahead," Gareth growled, walking a couple of paces forward. "Bastard is no friend of mine."

"Wait!" Frank said, hoping Jake would be fast enough in thinking to go along with him. "I… I know this man… I know you… you remember…"

"Ivan?"

Frank almost burst with relief as the surprised exclamation came out of Jake's mouth.

"Yes… yes…" he did not yet lower his gun. "Ivan. You _do _remember me."

"Didn't I tell you," Jake said, "Jacob never forgets."

They were running out of time, Frank knew. The men downstairs would have heard the shot and it wouldn't take them long to get up to them. At least for now they seemed to have stalled Greg, if not Gareth.

"And now," Jake went on, the expression on his face growing more serious, "I'm going to shoot you!"

He took a step forward, getting himself even more in Frank's face and forcing Frank to do likewise.

"You won't shoot me, Jacob," he said, but he did take the opportunity Jake had given him to once more tighten his finger on the trigger. "We're brothers, you and me."

He met Jake's eyes and saw him nod, imperceptibly in understanding. They had to take these men out, one way or another… had to be able to make a diversion for the men that were coming so that they could get out. He saw Jake's eyes flicker toward Gareth for a moment, and understood. For whatever reason… whatever happened… they had to take that one alive… He returned the imperceptible nod.

They moved as one, barely turning from each other, their trajectories crossing as their weapons retorted, his once, and Jake's twice. Greg and Gareth were down before they had a chance to realise what was happening. Frank crossed to the doorway before the ache in his wrist from the weapon's recoil had even faded.

"Stay there," he told Jake, and stepped through, closing the door behind him, then he ran down the corridor toward where the stairs came up as though he was chasing someone… meeting the gunmen that had come to investigate.

"They shoot… took down Walsh… and Burnett…" he gasped breathlessly, the accent as thick as he could make it. "I think they're looking for Parken. We must find them, before someone call for cops."

One of the men glanced past Frank before looking along the corridor. If he suspected Frank – Ivan as he knew him – was lying, he didn't show it. Only concern and determination to do the job he'd been given and protect Parken's base of operations.

"Take care of Walsh and Burnett. We'll find these others," he said at last, and signalled to his companions. They moved off to start searching the rooms along the corridor.

"How the hell are we supposed to get them out of there?" Cody glanced at Monica and saw she was staring at the monitor that was showing the patch-in from the surveillance cameras inside the hotel.

Since the first shots were fired there had been, and still was at least one man on each corridor and while Frank might have been able to just walk outside… even asserting that Jake – Jacob – was his friend, would seem suspicious at a time like this.

"_Talk to us, Cody," _Frank's voice came through the mic set into Jake's clothing, _"What have you got?"_

"Right about now, the only option I can offer you, is to get you taken out during a fire fight with police sent to investigate the gunshots." Cody sighed. "I was hoping for a maintenance access shaft from the basement, but there's nothing on these plans."

"_That won't work," _Jake's voice sounded tense, _"We'd never get to the first floor."_

"You get to the basement through the laundry chutes," Cody told him. "From there you go out of the same door you went in."

He and Monica listened while Jake explained everything to Frank.

"_Nix that, Cody."_ Frank instructed. _"At this point, keeping this cover open is not an option. Get an assault team in here. We're shutting them down."_

"Standby." Cody acknowledged and turned to a second channel. As he did so, Monica got up from her seat and started to get herself ready, grabbing a vest and headset as she did. "Tactical, this is Faulkner – UTC99876312. We are go on the Laponte Hotel. I repeat – we have a go."

"_Roger that, Command. ETA: ten minutes."_

"They'll be with you in ten," he told Jake and Frank.

**UNDISCLOSED LOCATION: 2.19pm**

He sighed. This wasn't the way he'd wanted it to be. Not really, in spite of his earlier thoughts. That had been his mood speaking – thinking for him.

Whatever happened to the 'old school' where even though you had your enemies, you respected them; where there was a code of conduct that ensured the safety of the innocent? He had to face it… those days were gone… and with it went any pretence of respectability left to mankind.

With another sigh he picked up the cell phone, found the ready prepared text message, and hit send.

"_What is this?" Skedell's eyes narrowed in suspicion as I walked in, trailed by the lawyers. My answer would be the most critical moment of the rest of the negotiations… and seemingly so innocuous._

"_These men want to talk with you and your people," I told him. "Personally I question the wisdom of it, but…"_

_Skedell took a moment to take that in. "Who are you?" he asked one of the men._

"_Good morning, Mister Skedell," the lawyer he'd addressed held out a hand for a handshake that never happened. "My name is Wilson. I'm an attorney at law. These men and I represent the grieving families of Waco. We'd really like the chance to speak to you and your people."_

_Skedell turned an accusing stare my way, "What kind of BS is this?" he demanded._

_I pursed my lips and shook my head, "As I said, it would suit me just fine to walk these guys out of here. I don't think it benefits anybody you talking to them."_

_His eyes narrowed again, his inherent suspicion of me, as a federal agent, blinding him to the fact that I was using those very suspicions against him._

"_No…" he said slowly, "No, I think we'll listen to what these gentlemen have to say. It'll take me a few minutes to get my people together though."_

"_That's perfectly all right, sir," the lawyer answered. "We have time."_

_And so it was settled, everything was going according to plan and for the next few hours I sat with the Freemen listening to the harrowing presentation from the Lawyer, and looking at slides and photographs of burned and broken bodies. As the presentation continued I watched the remaining Freemen for their reactions, all but willing their resolve to be cracked by the graphic images and emotional testimony of the people left behind._

"_We urge you," the lawyer concluded, "for the sake of your families and not for any other reason, to avoid a similar catastrophe here."_

_To his credit, the lawyer didn't press the point. He simply stood up and once again offered Skedell his hand. This time, Skedell accepted the handshake._

_We left them then; left them to an already increasing murmur of conversation to drive back to the perimeter line about a mile down the road. I didn't expect it would take much longer. Some time in the mid afternoon one of the officers watching the gate called me over._

"_There's a whole bunch of them at the gate waving for attention."_

_I nodded, "Two of you come with me."_

_We drove quickly back to the gate, and as I got out of the car, something made me reach for one of the photographs. Given cover by the two accompanying officer, I made my way toward the Freemen. There were six of them, as well as a woman and a boy._

"_I want you to take my boy out of here," the woman said as I approached._

"_I want that too," I nodded as I spoke. "Why don't you come with him?"_

_One of the Freemen took hold of her arm and tugged her back a step. She let go of her son as she was pulled back. She shook her head._

"_Just take my boy," she said._

"_If that's what you want," I answered, and walked forward to take the boy by the hand. As soon as I was close enough I slapped the photograph against the chest of the man holding on to the boy's mother._

"_Don't let this happen," I urged him, and then walked away with the boy. As we drove away in the car we could see them, standing by the gate, arguing over the picture._

_After that it was just a matter of time… the remaining sixteen Freemen surrendered peacefully the following morning, dropping their weapons at the gate and handing themselves over to the officers sent to meet them._

_As I understood it, the fifteen of them had unanimously outvoted Skedell's wavering intention to stay in Justus Township. It had taken me exactly two weeks._

_After a situation like that, the resolution can feel like a huge anti-climax and if you're not careful, you get addicted to the adrenaline that floods your system during the process itself and the time between cases becomes the haze of depression and purposelessness._

_It was while I was coming down from the high of one of many negotiations that I first met Saran… I mean really _met_ her. My whole life literally changed. The haze cleared without the need for another case – through the whole of the time we went on our coffee dates it was as though I was seeing the world in a different way._

_She was a whirlwind of vitality that swept through everything that I was and cleared away the dross and negativity of all the years before; wiping the slate clean. Held in her arms there wasn't anything I couldn't do and more importantly, I was free to just _be._ With Saran my emotions weren't a burden any more, they were a lifeline. For the first time in as long as I could remember it was safe for me to allow them back into my life. I could live as a man, rather than just exist as something less. I couldn't ever imagine being without her. And then suddenly I was. She was gone._

_Just after I thought I was going to lose her in the worse possible way… for _my_ past to have taken her from me was an unbearable enough thought in the first place, but then for her to tell me in the note she left – even thought I now know that note was not written by her – that she didn't truly know me as I had believed she did, when she said she didn't know how I did what I did… there are no words to describe the way my heart shattered that day._

_When you've gone from what I was, to the life I had with Saran, you can never go back. It's like they say, once you've let the genie out of the bottle… once I allowed myself to start _feeling_ again… there was no way I could just cut it off; switch off again; return to the mechanical existence I had before. I needed her. I loved her – cliché though it is – more than I love life._

_So after a week, when she hadn't showed up anywhere, alive or dead, and when they wouldn't grant me the resources to conduct my _own_ search… follow my _own_ leads, I did what I'd tried to do all those years before. I left._

_Six months of frustration; six months of trying to follow those leads without back up, without the resources I needed to be able to do it properly, and with growing desperation clouding my mind and my judgement, did I really ever stand a chance of finding her? I was clinging so hard to the need to have her in my life that nothing else mattered, nothing else registered… and I didn't even notice that the man I'd become – the Frank Donovan that had been going to marry Saran Ceria Farlain – was all but dead._

_Cody once asked me when I was made… That was when… Those first six months without the woman I loved…_

_Bitter irony doesn't even come close to knowing that the man who took her from me was the one that practically saved me; forced me back to work; brought me to work with the team; a job that eventually set me on the path that would reunite me with Saran and with the daughter I hadn't even known I had._

_There's something very humbling about children. People will tell you that having a child is a way to invoke your immortality. I disagree. In fact I diametrically oppose that position. To look into the eyes of your child is to face your own mortality; to realise that life and death happen around you all the time, but it's a _good_ realisation. It's honest and it opens you up to giving all that you can to make sure that little life that depends on you for everything has a safe and happy life. You'd move the world for them if you could, to make sure the world is a better place for them to be._

_You do it happily, willingly and with everything that you are, because you know that if you fail… if you _fail…

**LAPONTE 'HOTEL': 3.10pm**

"I'm all right," Jake gasped as she helped him out of the vest. "I'm fine. Just winded."

Monica looked up as Frank came over to join them from where he'd been speaking with the SWAT team leader and another police officer. Around them was a state of mostly organised chaos. Police officers and EMTs led both men and women out of the hotel. Some of them, she knew, would be completely innocent in as much as the case went, guilty only of taking advantage of the illegal brothel. It would likely take days to get to the bottom of who knew what – and judging from Donovan's posture, they didn't _have_ days.

"Will he be all right?" he asked her.

"A few bruises," she said, "Nothing lasting. He's good to go."

Donovan nodded.

"You've done good work," he told them all as Cody came to stand with them, holding an envelope in his hand. Then he turned to Jake, "I'm going to need you to go back to Nova. Tell him you got out before the police arrived, that you took out his man… we need a presence inside his organisation."

"We have Alex," Jake said, still rasping a little. "Nova wanted one of Parken's girls… sent me to get rid of her minder… persuade her to work for him."

Frank shook his head, "She has a specific role, and it won't keep her close enough to Nova. It has to be you."

"All right," Jake agreed.

"Monica, I want you to sit in on the interrogations – find out as much as you can… and quickly. Parken was planning some kind of hit, and we have to find out what and where."

She nodded, "I'm on it."

"Cody?" Donovan turned his head and raised an eyebrow at the tech-op.

"Donovan, you got a minute?" he asked softly.

She watched as Frank regarded him for a long moment, his eyes moving over the other man's face. Finally he frowned slightly and nodded.

"Walk with me," he said and began to move away with Cody.

"What was that all about?" Jake asked.

"I have this terrible feeling we're about to lose Cody," she said.

"What, you think he'd quit?" Jake blinked and surprise coloured his voice, "That's not Cody."

Monica sighed, "He's been through a lot in a short space of time, Jake. There's no guarantee that Cody's… Cody, you know?"

She followed Jake's gaze. He was looking over to where Donovan and Cody had stopped walking and were now talking in earnest. Donovan's face was as dark as a storm cloud and there was an almost defeated expression of pain on Cody's face.

"I'll ride with them when Cody runs Donovan home," Jake told her. "But I still can't believe he'd quit."

Monica nodded, and just sighed. Sometimes knowing everything she did felt like a heavier burden than she wanted to carry.

**RESIDENCE – FRANK AND SARAN DONOVAN: 4.45pm**

"Cody!" Donovan snapped as they turned into the road from the corner that would bring them out almost opposite his house. Jake looked up from glove box and instantly saw the reason for Donovan's tone of voice. The front door of the house was open, the frame splintered around the lock.

"I see it," Cody answered, and accelerated to bring the car up the driveway beside Saran's car and as close to the door as he could get. The three of them ran for the house almost before the car was fully stationary, drawing their weapons as they went.

"I've got the back," Cody headed for the gate as Jake and Donovan paused by the front door. When they were both in position Jake saw Donovan nod. He surged through the door moving to gain a clear view of as many blind spots as he could cover in a short amount of time, and knowing that Frank would be doing the same right at his side.

"Clear!" he announced, and headed up the stairs as Donovan went further into the house, calling for Saran and Alethea – perhaps not the wisest thing, but understandable.

Systematically he checked each room along the hallway, finding all of them empty as far as the end of the hallway, where he knew the master bedroom was, suspecting that whoever had broken down the door had taken Donovan's wife and child.

As he burst through the door to the bedroom, he stopped dead, his blood turning to ice. It was only when Saran moaned that he was able to move, and forgetting the protocol of safety checks, he ran to her side, sliding the last few inches across the carpet on his knees.

She lay next to the upturned bed, half on her side, and blood soaked her clothing and the floor beside her.

"Easy, Saran… it's Jake," he tried to reassure her, but quickly saw that she was beyond that. He dropped his gun and pulled out his cell phone, quickly sending for an ambulance before making an attempt to stop the bleeding.

When he heard the two sets of footsteps on the stairs he called out urgently, "Cody, keep him _out_a here!" Even knowing he hadn't a hope in hell of doing so.

"Saran!"

Jake turned at the anguish in Donovan's voice, and the sound of the scuffle as Cody fought, clearly with all his strength, to keep their boss pinned against the wall beside the door.

_Author's disclaimer: The 'Freeman Standoff' is a real event in American history. In early 1996 on a 960 acre ranch, 30 miles outside of Jordan, Montana, a group of armed men, many of whom were wanted on state and federal felony charges held the FBI at a standoff for 81 days – the longest siege in FBI history._

_For the purposes of this story, I have fictionalised this event, changing the names of the people involved and of course fitting Donovan into the key role of the FBI negotiator who eventually ended the standoff. For the most part I have kept the timeline as it was presented on the CNN website, only condensing the last few days for purposes of pace and sense of the story._

_In the '_Fathers and Sons' _episode of the TV program on which this story is based, the character of Alex Cross referenced this event as one of the achievements of Frank Donovan during his career as an FBI negotiator, along with the freeing of hostages aboard a commercial airline jet in Ethiopia. Everyone does airline terrorism and hijacking and so I decided to take the other route for the sake of keeping the story fresh and interesting._

_Naturally I have had to speculate at what went on during the negotiations and the reasoning behind the decisions that Donovan made in the way he handled the case. No offence was meant to anyone that was actually involved in this event, or those related to them, or to the fine men and women of the American government and related government agencies. I simply had to make Frank Donovan look like the protégé that he is presented as in the TV show itself. Please remember, this is a **heavily fictionalised** version of the event in question._


	5. Act 4

UC: Undercover If… As We Try – Act 4 

_When I come to remember that day – and I do… often – when I look back on that nightmare that was a part of my life and ask, could I have saved them? It breaks my heart to know that in all probability the answer is "no." I allowed myself to be manipulated; acted out of fear, pride, arrogance… any one of a hundred other weaknesses._

_My mistake – I forgot about the only person that truly has power over an individual; the only one whose mores and ideals really matter as we try to make the world a better and safer place for the lives we lead as individuals and the lives of others important to us._

_My mistake was not that I didn't trust in the team's ability to have worked it all out and, no matter the odds, to have helped me – helped everyone – to come through it safely. I forgot to trust in myself._

_If… as we try… to hold it all together when everything we know would come crashing down around us; when everyone we love is suddenly taken from us, we have to believe in ourselves; to trust ourselves and to hold fast to our ideals._

_Know yourself and be true to who you are._

**NORTHWEST MEMORIAL HOSPITAL – 5.17pm June 7th**

He caught her arm as she virtually ran past them in the corridor. She slid to a halt and he watched her pass her eyes over the front of Jake's shirt, stained with Saran's blood. He'd refused the clean scrubs they'd offered him.

"How is she?" she fired the question at him as she tore her eyes away from Jake, "How's Donovan?"

He sighed and closed his eyes.

"What?" she demanded. "Cody, what?"

"She didn't make it." Jake said flatly.

"What?" she whispered, barely able to voice the word.

"She died in the ambulance. They couldn't resuscitate her," he said, finally opening his eyes and looking up at Monica.

"Aleth—"

"They killed her too," Cody said, fighting tears himself. "Broke her neck."

"Crime Scene Investigators figure Saran was shot trying to defend their daughter," Jake added, peeling himself away from the wall. "She took all nine rounds…"

"God, Jake," Monica took a step back, and Cody watched as conflicting emotions fought for expression on her face. "She was… she was just fine when—"

"Don't you go blaming yourself for this, Monica," he said. "This was not your fault. This was cold, and calculated, and meant to punish Donovan for getting too close."

"The slugs match standard government issue firearms." Jake said. "Chicago PD wants our weapons, on the advice of the FBI SAC."

"They can't think we—" Monica looked as though she was going to hit someone. "Who the hell?"

"Straight from Bloom's office," Cody told her.

"And you can guess who's pulling his strings," she said. "How _is_ Donovan?"

Cody shook his head.

"You contacted Alex yet? Pulled her in?" she asked.

"I was all set to. He told me not."

"He can't possibly keep this case active; ongoing at a time like—"

"Actually he threatened to fire me if I did… Monica," Cody said, "so yeah. He is."

"I should talk to him," she started to turn from them.

"I shouldn't if _I_ were you," Jake caught her arm. "You do _not_ want to get caught up in _that_ shitstorm."

She shook off his arm. "Jake, it's my job to advise…" she broke off as Donovan came out of the room at the end of the hall and started toward them, walking stiffly, as if holding himself in check.

"Eight am, Agents. My office. Tomorrow morning," he said, and moved to continue along the hall.

"Donovan," Monica called after him. Cody looked down again and sighed, "Frank, wait!"

Donovan stopped walking and turned slowly.

"I know what you're going to say, Monica," he said, his jaw tight, "and you can save it. Now… and only now… can we crack this case."

His nostrils flared as he fought for control of his voice that wavered as he spoke. Cody looked up and stood straighter as though doing so could somehow lend Donovan his strength.

"You think I don't want justice for Saran and 'Thea?" He started to come back towards them, advancing on Monica. Cody almost moved… almost… to put himself between his fellow agent and their boss. "That I would give up on this case, and any chance of getting that?"

"Donovan," Monica tried again, "I just think—"

"You're damn right I'm too close to this case," he said, cutting her off. "But I _will_ crack this – and take these bastards down and you can either help me…"

Cody exchanged glances with Jake. The expression on Donovan's face was one of contained fury that he knew was covering the grief. When he spoke again, Donovan's voice was low, and dangerous.

"…or keep the hell out of my way."

"Donovan," Cody said softly, and met the man's eyes when Frank snapped his head around to look in his direction. "Let me drive you…"

But where? Where the hell would Donovan go after something like this?

Donovan nodded and said, "Home, Cody. I'm going h-ome."

**RESIDENCE – FRANK DONOVAN: 2.06am June 8th**

He stood in the doorway of the room, illuminated only by the light filtering in through the open drapes from the street lamps outside, staring alternately at the dark stain on the carpet and the wreckage of the bed, still upended against the wall.

Memories of the terrible discovery held him immobile… Jake's voice, calling to Cody to keep him out of the room… being held against the wall, struggling with his tech-op to get to his wife's side… finally freed, and picking up the shattered headboard of the bed to find his daughter trapped – not breathing… her tiny body still against his – her little hands cold against his neck… head of the investigative team all but telling him the killing had been, if not by a government agent, then at least sanctioned by one…

He had a pretty good idea who. The man had been careless and the sharp minds in his team; the sharpest mind – his tech-op – had not missed the common thread. He thought about the hesitant conversation in which Cody had disclosed the information, knowing what it had cost the man to discover it.

"_Donovan, you got a minute?"_

_He looked intently at Cody, searching his eyes for clues to what it might be that he felt he could not say in front of the others. He knew this case had been hard on the Tech-op, and for that he felt responsible. He frowned at that thought and nodded._

"_Walk with me," he said and moved away from the other agents at Cody's side._

"_I erm," Cody started sheepishly, "I was going through some stuff looking for leads…" Then the man sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "I should maybe start at the beginning."_

"_It's all right, Cody," he said softly, reassuringly, "Whatever it is, you can talk to me, you know that."_

"_I know it's just... some of it is personal, you know? Michelle…" The wiry man trailed off, and fidgeted slightly._

"_After what I know about you and Michelle…? Cody what could be personal any more?"_

"_Just let me start at the beginning, Donovan," he insisted._

_Frank nodded. "All right," he said and crossing one arm over his chest, the other resting against it with the side of his thumb against his mouth he leaned slightly toward Cody, listening intently._

"_Leggett came to me supposedly with compensation for the things I've been through in this case; a sealed envelope. I believed it was supposed to distract me from the case, but he practically gave me the key to crack the encryption on your file." Cody sighed, "Then when Monica gave us the briefing on Walsh she mentioned the R-99 coding that had gotten him out on parole. I didn't think anything about it at the time, but when I got home – you know what I'm like – my mind wouldn't stop chewing around on it. I started trying to figure out who would have authorised a thing like that. At first I worried that it might have been you, I mean… You have R99 clearance…"_

"_Cody why would I do a thing like that?" he asked, frowning darkly._

"_No… I know it wasn't you. Let me finish."_

_Donovan nodded again, still frowning, his own mind going over what he knew, trying to put the pieces together himself._

"_It made me go back and look at what was inside that envelope. Leggett had given me a copy of her medical records from the women's clinic where she'd had the abortion. I was… damn sure at that point that it was a distraction… God it hurt…"_

_He reached out and put a hand onto his agent's shoulder, leaning down a little to look into the man's face as Cody looked down, trying to grab a hold of his emotions. There was something else. He could see it in the tortured expression in Cody's eyes._

"_I'm sorry, Cody," he said softly._

_Cody shook his head, but didn't say anything for several more moments. When he did, the revelation hit him – hard._

"_I was about to put it away when I spotted the government HMO coding," he paused again, and cleared his throat before saying, "and to make a long story very short, once I cracked through the file classification, I found out she was with the Company. Low rank, but she was CIA… and the agent that had classified her file was an R99 agent. The same one that had gotten Walsh out of jail; authorised the swoop on your house; the raid on the Crib and my arrest – X207. I think you'll know that number."_

_His blood almost stopped flowing as Cody handed him an envelope, explaining that he'd made copies of all the evidence he had to support his findings. He _did_ know that number. He knew it very well…_

The face of the man to whom X207 belonged swam before his eyes, his weapon raised, aimed at Saran as she put herself between the man and 'Thea. Hate twisted in his gut, bubbled over into fury and finally exploded through his whole body.

He turned slightly to face the dresser beside the door and with a growling cry upended the heavy piece of furniture without effort. Snatching up the straight backed chair he brought it down repeatedly against the back of the dresser until it shattered into kindling in his hands. Throwing it aside he advanced on the full length mirror and mindless of his hands, punched hard against the glass until it splintered in spider-web cracks, at which he snatched it from its stand and threw it with all his strength toward the far wall, where it shattered completely, scattering shards of glass over the floor to wink at him from the carpet stained with the blood of the woman he'd loved. He kicked at it… kicked at the upturned mattress, the ruined bed frame… kept on kicking until the wood cracked, until his legs and feet ached… until his balance faltered in exhaustion and he dropped gracelessly to the floor.

There beneath the wreckage of his marital bed the edge of a crocheted blanket caught his eye. Snatching at it with hands bloodied from his assault on the mirror he pulled with all of his remaining strength to get it free, almost bringing the remains of the bed down on top of his head, until he could hold it close, breathe in deeply of the scent still lingering on the fibres… the clean, slightly milky scent of his daughter.

He tried to say her name, but all that came to his lips was a wrenching sob that came from deep in his gut, so painful it shook the whole of his body. Another followed, and another, each one more desperate, more wretched, until there was nothing left of him but the pain and the tears and the caress of the blanket that had comforted 'Thea through everything when he could not. Awareness of everything else became meaningless and finally disappeared completely as exhaustion and emotion dragged him down to oblivion.

**RESIDENCE – CODY FAULKNER: 3.35am**

His hand groped for the light switch as the insistent sound finally broke through into his sleep. He sat up and looked at his watch, and then at the alarm clock on the night stand. The insistent ringing continued and finally he got out of bed and padded to the phone in the living room.

"_Cody, listen,_" Jake's voice on the other end of the phone didn't bother with preliminaries, and held an urgency that woke him immediately. "_Nova called me – some kind of situation – said he needs me. I'm en route now. Tell Donovan—_"

"Jake," Cody warned. "I'm not so sure this is a good idea."

"_If we still want this cover I don't have a choice._" Jake told him.

"You're not kitted out," he said, still trying to dissuade his fellow agent from going U/C until they knew more about what they were dealing with.

"_I'll be in touch when I can,_" Jake's voice had a kind of resigned finality to it that told Cody he was about to hang up.

"Jake…" he tried and again, "Jake!" but all he got in answer was the buzz of the dial tone in his ear.

"Damn it," he said, almost hissing the words and looking skyward added, "Tell me something else that could go wrong."

**NOVA-LUCAS TECHNOLOGIES: 7.49am**

Alex draped herself as languorously as she could across Nova's shoulders as she reached to pour coffee into his almost empty cup. She figured that as long as she could keep him distracted, ply him with coffee and sweets, the longer she'd stay free of his advances. She was getting herself quite the reputation from the reports the clients he gave her to were sending him and he was starting to seem curious about her himself. Of course those reports had all been clever computer generated forgeries created by Cody, as all of the clients she'd left handcuffed to hotel beds for the team to pick up – take in for questioning, but still… a reputation, it seemed, was a reputation with this man, and he seemed increasingly anxious to sample his own product.

The video screen in the conference room came to life and it took all the years experience she had as an undercover agent to prevent her from reacting to the face that came onto the screen, though her mind raced through millions of possibilities in a single instant, including one she wanted very much to dismiss, but which sang the loudest in her mind.

"_That's quite the decoration you have there, Madeira._"The man on the screen smiled and nodded his head in her direction.

"She's quite the beauty isn't she?" Nova chuckled and ran fingers along her arm, caressing her. Alex tried very hard not to shudder. "And quite talented too, so I'm led to believe, though I have yet to sample that pleasure for myself."

"_Oh, she's very talented, I'm sure._" The face on the video screen stopped smiling and added, "_You know, of course, that she's a Federal Agent?_"

Cold twisted in Alex' belly as every undercover agent's worst nightmare played out in front of her. He mind raced through the options open to her. Run…? She wouldn't get far through Nova's security. Hope that Cody was in early, had heard that and was even now mobilising SWAT to come in and effect an immediate takedown – get her out? She doubted that would happen and even if it did it would still take time to organise, and between then and now she would be on her own. Bluff…? It might work for a while, but she doubted that she'd be able to convince Nova for long, particularly if she continued to avoid his advances, and she had no intention of allowing him to get more than a whiff of the perfume she was wearing behind her ears. No… it seemed she had no choice but to tough it out until the team reviewed the tape and could get someone in to get her out, takedown or not.

She started to try and stand up, but Nova closed his hand around her wrist, and scuffling with him now would only weaken her position, but he held her pinned and she couldn't reach the small weapon she had fitted to the inside of her boot. She was at a distinct disadvantage. She held her breath waiting to see what would happen; what Nova would do, or say to the man in the video link.

"Of course," Nova purred, but he was lying. Alex could feel the tension in his back and shoulders and in the way he tightly gripped her wrist.

The man on screen nodded, "_I have the documents you need and the authorisation codes._" He held up a small black briefcase for Nova to see. "_I can bring them to you… say… within the hour?_"

"Wait on that, my friend," Nova smiled coldly. "I have a busy morning, and I'm sure that a lunch time meeting would be more beneficial to all of us."

"_But—_"

"Do not seek to change our relationship now, Mr Government-Agent," Nova warned, then he smiled, it was a sickly smile, "Besides, I need some time to deal with my little… domestic problem."

"_Lunch time then,_" the man sighed.

"Excellent," Nova said, and killed the video conference link.

Finally he let go of Alex and she backed up and drew the gun from her boot, and levelled it at Nova's head. The door burst inward and four henchmen, all bearing weapons pointed in her direction, stopped just inside the door. It was only then she realised that as he stood he had pushed the panic button.

"Drop your weapons or he dies," she said harshly.

"Oh, I don't think so, Ms…?" Nova purred, and when she did not give him her name continued, "Besides the fact that you're a Federal Agent and it's against the law to kill and unarmed man…" he spread his arms to the side, "Do you really believe that you could shoot me and not expect my men to open fire in return? Yes, you might kill me, but you too would be dead, and you do not strike me as the kind to invite that kind of fate."

He gestured to his henchmen and two of them moved forward in her direction, their weapons still pointing at her head. Momentarily she shifted her aim to the men advancing on her, before backing up a little and returning the focus of her weapon to Nova.

"Back off," she ordered the men, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice, "I mean it!"

The men kept coming.

For a moment her finger tightened on the trigger, but in that moment everything flashed before her eyes… her life, the people in her life and those that had been… she was not ready to give that up. She was not ready to die.

The cold of metal pressed against her temple and hands closed around hers. She let them take her weapon and stood still, defiantly staring at Nova.

"A wise choice," he told her calmly. Then to his henchmen he said, "Take her upstairs. Find their listening and tracking devices and then find out what they know."

The cold barrel of the gun left her temple, but in the next instant pain erupted beside her ear none the less, and her vision faded to the black of unconsciousness.

**UC CRIB: 8.06am**

"Damn it, Donovan, you _knew_," she accused, "We have to go in there, and we have to go in now. Where the _hell_ is Cody?"

Donovan caught her arm as she started to pace toward the intercom. She stared at his hand on her arm for a moment then up into his face, searching for any sign of something that could give her cause to order him from duty – from command. She saw nothing. Yes, his eyes were red rimmed, either from lack of sleep or from weeping – probably both, and there were Band-Aids plastered across the knuckles of the hand that held her arm, but his expression was rational, even calculating… and he was calm, which she thought, in that moment, put him in better shape than she was.

"Monica, listen to me," he said in a low, commanding voice. "We can go in there now, arrest Nova and his men and shut down the arms production, but if we do that without the evidence to take down the government insider as well, we might as well just package up the weapons in nice fancy Christmas paper and send them to Eastern Europe courtesy of the US mail. He will just lie low, find himself another operation and we are right back to square one. Without the evidence, without catching this man with his hand in the cookie jar, we have _nothing_. We have to wait for him to make his move."

"But Alex…"

"I won't pretend this isn't a calculated risk, Monica, but Jake is in there somewhere, and they both of them _know_ the risks they take every time they agree to go undercover." He let go of her arm as he spoke. "We have to trust them to keep their eyes open for any possible mean of escape they can… any way they can help each other to be safe."

The computer bleeped, and she turned her head to see what was coming up on the terminal screen. What she saw made her leap for the keyboard.

"No!" Donovan grabbed a hold of her again, and swung her away from the terminal access.

"But he's deleting the files."

Donovan held her pinned against the desk, his hand open, fingers spread against her upper chest. "No, he _thinks_ he's deleting the files and covering his tracks. Cody has everything running through a second backup relay in the operations van. All he's doing is incriminating himself as he's done all along."

"Then _why_ can't we go in and get Alex and Jake _out_ of there?" She pushed him away in frustration.

"Think about it, Monica. What do we know? What do we need?"

She took a deep breath, forcing her analytical mind to calm itself against the panic and worry for her friends. "We need incontrovertible evidence that this rogue agent is involved in the arms trafficking. We need the nuclear activation codes he's taking to Nova. We need the evidence that General Scirocco knew about what was going on from the beginning and was encouraging Nova in order to get approval to send troops into Eastern Europe, and we need the files detailing shipments, transactions and destinations for all of the consignments of arms."

Donovan nodded slowly. "And that's why I'm sending Cody in to get them."

Monica rounded on him in shocked anger once more, "You can't do _that._"

"I have no choice," he told her with a note of true regret in his voice, "The files we need are kept on a dedicated system, and it's not linked to the mainframe, so there's no remote access."

"But Cody—"

"Cody what?" Cody asked as he came into the room.

"I'm going to need you to get the files from Nova's computer," Donovan said.

Cody shrugged, "Okay," he said brightly… and it was clear to Monica that he did not understand quite what Donovan meant. She was about to open her mouth to spell it out to him, when Frank caught her eyes in a warning stare. Something about the way he looked at her stopped her from speaking.

"Monica, I need to see you in my office," he said simply, and started for the stairs. Without knowing why, she followed rather than staying to explain to Cody that he was about to be sent into a hostile situation.

**FRANK DONOVAN'S OFFICE: 8.25am**

"I can't believe you're planning all of this without letting him know just what you mean," she said accusingly as soon as he closed the door behind her. She pointed out of the window down to where Cody was sitting at the computers, working. "He's not an undercover agent, Donovan, he's a technician. His expertise is _not_ out in the field."

"He is the only one that can do what needs to be done," he said running a hand through his hair, frustrated by her obstinacy. "You think I'd send him into danger otherwise?"

"Quite frankly," she snapped at him turning her back and walking away a few paces before swinging round to face him again, "right about now I'm not sure _what_ you'd do. I think you're angry, and grieving and I think you're letting that grief drive you to getting revenge on this man no matter _what_... or more to the point _who_ that might cost."

"You are wrong," he told her. Her accusation smacked of a loss of trust in him, and that hurt more than he could articulate, so he just let the hurt colour his voice.

"Then _what_, Donovan?" she almost implored him to answer.

Donovan took a deep breath and looked at her for a long time before he said softly, "He was the one that came to me with this; that worked it all out and in the course of doing that he found out things… things that a man shouldn't ever know."

She crossed her arms and stood with one hip cocked to the side as she raised her eyebrow. It was a posture she used often when she wasn't convinced and he knew then that in order to make her understand he'd have to betray Cody's confidence.

"Just after I joined the team Cody got involved with a woman called Michelle."

"I know about Michelle," she said, puzzlement in her voice. "She was perfect for him. We all thought they'd get married. Never understood why they split up."

"CIA," he said softly.

"No way!" she almost visibly rocked back on her heels. "And he found out about that?"

"She was sent undercover into a relationship with the one man that could keep them informed about every single move I made. That's how long this has been going on."

"But he found out, right? Blew her off…?"

Donovan shook his head, "It's worse than that, Monica." He stopped speaking for a long time, turning over in his mind the things he knew that Cody wanted… needed to keep private, but without which his profiler would not have the information she needed to see why the takedown of this case had to proceed as it did. He had to give full disclosure. He continued softly, "She got pregnant and quite obviously that was further than she was prepared to go for the sake of an undercover operation. She waited until we were out of town on a case and had an abortion. Somehow, he found out about _that_ and Monica he… totally. Lost. The plot." He sighed. "I got a call from the Chicago PD. He'd gone out… gotten drunk… damaged property… waving his gun around and… other things that I won't go into because it's not fair to Cody."

She nodded, listening attentively now. "Did you know what she was?"

He shook his head, "Not then – not until Cody brought me the evidence the other day. We ran her of course. We run anyone that any of you get involved with in more than a casual way. It came back clean. Dental technician working in a downtown office, no criminal record, expired moving traffic violation, speeding as I recall, but nothing at all to suggest she was anything other than she said she was."

"What did you do?"

"I didn't want to lose my tech-op, and some of the charges they were laying against him would have finished him in the bureau so I strong-armed the cops. Told them it was all part of an ongoing U/C sting and used my clearance to get the charges dropped and completely expunge his record of even the arrest."

"I had no idea," she said softly.

"Cody wanted it that way. Took bereavement counselling outside the bureau for the loss of his child – a daughter as it turns out it would have been and everything got buried, forgotten until Leggett brought him Michelle's medical records from the women's clinic that did the termination."

"The envelope…?"

"Yep," he said, his voice clipped. "It was a mistake. You know Cody doesn't miss things that easily and he was investigating the R99 that got Walsh out; saw the insurance admission coding and… followed the paper trail. The same man that set all this up; the man we need to take down in all of this… is the one that sent Michelle to Cody. He needs closure in this as much as I do… as much as the US government needs this treason stopped."

"Holy crap!" she sat down and looked up at him.

"So…" he said quietly, turning his mind back to the business in hand, "We have work to do."

"Just promise me one thing, Donovan," she said and he cocked his eyebrow waiting for her to tell him what that thing was. "If he feels uncomfortable with this, we'll find another way."

Wordlessly, he nodded. He knew it wouldn't come to that.

**NOVA-LUCAS TECHNOLOGIES: 10.55am**

"Jacob, where have you been? I've been looking for you."

Jake tried not to jump away from the office door as he heard Nova's voice behind him. He turned round and fixed what he hoped was a rather helpless and sheepish smile on his face.

"You have caught me," she said, trying to sound embarrassed. "I was looking for the secretary." He sidled up to Nova and nudged his arm in a conspiratorial and suggestive way, "She is pretty, no?"

"You will have time for secretaries later," Nova laughed, "At the moment I need you to… run an errand for me."

Jake gave him an interested look and then took the bag that Nova held out to him.

"A business associate of mine is staying at the Sheraton Hotel, room three-oh-five… We're meeting for lunch and while he's here I want you to… take the bag to his hotel room. Leave it in his closet. Max will go with you."

"A simple delivery and I need a minder?" Jake frowned.

"Today is a big day for me, Jacob. I wouldn't like anything to happen to you." Nova raised an eyebrow, and the look on his face told Jake that he shouldn't push his luck. Instead he nodded.

"All right," he said. "I will go and find Max."

**UC CRIB: 11.06am**

Frank Donovan looked up as Monica came back into the room and nodded to him. Both of them looked over at Cody. The tech-op was fidgeting in his seat, restless, nervous.

"Cody," he sighed, "you can still—"

"Forget it, Donovan. You and I both know that we don't have that option." Cody turned the chair around so that his back was to the computer screens and he was facing them.

He levelled him with a steady and searching look and finally satisfied that Cody was resolved to do whatever had to be done, he nodded, though he still added, "All right, but if it gets too much… If at _any_ time you feel insecure in what you're called upon to do, Cody, you get out… right out and we'll send in SWAT. It will be messier, but—"

"I'm fine," Cody said, and got up to pace.

"And a bad liar," Donovan told him, watching him for a moment or two before nodding to Monica to take up the narrative.

"Based on what we know," she said, "you'll have about eight minutes to—"

"Whoa!" Cody interrupted, rounding on the woman, "_about_ eight minutes? What's that – seven minutes and forty seconds or seven minutes fifty seven? It makes a big difference. In twenty seconds I can draw my gun and fire off a few rounds. In three—"

"Sorry, Cody, that's as precise as we can be," she said.

Cody sighed, and looked down. Donovan watched the breathing slow as the other man took steps to calm himself. After a while he looked up again and said, "So, eight minutes to…?"

"Get in, establish Alex' location, make contact with Jake and download the files."

"In eight minutes?" Cody's voice squeaked, "Are you out of your—"

"Cody," Frank called his name.

The tech-op sighed and turned an apologetic look Monica's way. She shrugged. Donovan was aware she knew they were cutting it fine. She'd told him as much. Quickly he took over the explanation.

"You'll be going in as a system's engineer. It's the only way we can get you in and you'll be wearing coveralls, so that you can wear a vest. But it will – and Cody listen to this and pay attention – it won't be a full vest and it won't protect you against automatic weapons' fire for more than a couple of seconds."

"I got it," Cody told him.

"Anything looks like it might happen; it looks like it might go bad – you pull out… and I'm not hearing argument on that," he said.

"Ear piece?" Cody asked.

"And mic… in the case."

Cody nodded, appearing comforted by that. He himself was more comfortable knowing that they would be able to maintain contact with Cody.

"Anything else I should know?"

"You're not going in there to be a hero, Cody. You job's to find out where they're holding Alex, find Jake, download those files and then get out. Let the retrieval team handle it from there."

"I have no intention of trying heroics, believe me," he said. "I'll find her though, I—"

Donovan put a hand on Cody's arm. He didn't need to say any more. "I know."

Cody nodded, and then Donovan led him to study the building schematics… the three of them working together to find the best way to achieve the desired results.

**SHERATON HOTEL: 12.42pm**

Jake put the bag down carefully into the closet and glanced over his shoulder to check that Max was not watching before he opened up the bag to look inside. He had no doubt as to what he would find, but it would help the bomb squad if he could tell them exactly what type of device and more importantly, if he could ascertain what time the device was set to go off.

Obviously Nova didn't want his 'business associate' to be around to tell the tale. He figured there was enough C4 in the bag to take down the entire building, not just to take out one man. But how could Nova be sure that, whoever this man was, he would be in the hotel room at the time of the explosion.

Realisation dawned on him as a cold knot forming in the pit of his stomach, leaving him feeling weak and sick. He meant to use Alex. He had to find a way to get rid of Max and warn the others without blowing his cover.

**UC CRIB: 12.43pm**

Frank came down the stairs after taking the call in his office. He came straight to where the others were watching the live feed that was coming in from the on site operations van.

"It's now or never, Cody," he said, "We have to go."

Cody got up from his seat, wiping his hands on the legs of his pants. To anyone who didn't know him he would have looked collected, but his eyes betrayed his nervousness, and he knew Monica would see it as well as he had.

"You know you don't have to do this, right?" she said predictably and put a hand onto Cody's shoulder as she too got to her feet.

Cody shook his head, "She saved our ass out there more times than I can remember, Monica. She's a friend. I _have_ to," he said.

"Cody," Donovan called him over to the door and to the unmarked car that was waiting outside. Before he came to join him, Cody took out his weapon and checked the breach.

**SHERATON HOTEL: 12.44pm**

Jake got to his feet and turned around, ready to leave. He'd decided a trip to the bathroom on the way to the car would give him cover enough to at least get a message to Cody. He trusted his fellow agent to take it from there.

He stopped dead as he found himself staring down the barrel of Max's gun as he stood up.

"Hey," he put a puzzled frown on his face, trying a bluff, "this is no time to play games."

"You can drop the act, Fed." Max said, pulling back the hammer on his weapon.

Slowly… carefully, he raised his hands… waiting for his moment, breathing slowly to keep his cool. It would come.

"Okay," he said softly, "But put down the gun, huh? You know as well as I do that there's enough C4 in that bag to blow the whole block into the middle of next week, and with a home-made detonator? Come on. It only takes… what… a hot shell casing… a through and through and…" He shrugged and shook his head to indicate what he meant. "Maybe I stumble back and… knock into it…?"

Max's eyes narrowed in suspicion, but there was worry too.

"We can both still walk out of here," Jake told him, using as soothing a voice as he could.

"Get on your knees, Jacob… if that's even your name."

"It's Jake," he said. "And you don't have to do this…"

"I said get down!"

With what he hoped would pass for a defeated sigh, Jake started to lower himself, crouching a little as he appeared to be following Max's instructions. He didn't have a choice. He had to act now, if he got to his knees, he'd lost.

As soon as he'd coiled himself enough, tensed the muscles in his leading leg ready to give himself the momentum he'd need he exploded in motion. He'd only get one chance. He lowered his head and barrelled toward Max's chest.

Max grunted as his head connected with his sternum, Jake hooked his leg around the back of Max's feet and let the momentum overbalance them both. Max fired, but the shot went high over Jake's bent spine, the trajectory of the bullet toward the ceiling as both men began to fall.

Without giving the other man a chance to recover, he smashed his elbow against the side of his head, his other hand reaching to grasp the wrist of the hand holding the gun and slam it repeatedly into the ground. He ignored the pain of the punches that were landing again and again against his side and his kidneys. He kept his weight pinning Max beneath him as much as he could, as Max bucked and writhed to get free.

Again he brought his elbow up against the side of the other man's head, hoping to stun him. This was a fight that, as low and dirty as it was, he could not afford to lose.

**U/C OPERATIONS VAN: 12.57pm**

Frank ran ahead of him toward the non-descript van parked at the side of the building in the block opposite the manufacturing plant and Monica followed behind. Inside the van the SWAT commander stood stiff backed, watching the monitors. He turned as they entered, and Donovan nodded to him.

"What do we have?" Donovan asked, in command of the situation as soon as they entered. Monica squeezed Cody's arm as she passed him and slipped into her usual seat.

"Same as when I called you," the commander answered, "Two in the stairwell, one in the main lobby, we're not sure about the basement – boiler could be masking the heat signatures, but there's someone on the roof. This is in addition to the usual personnel of course."

The man finally nodded a greeting to him and Cody answered with a quiet, "Hey."

"Waiting for a chopper?" Donovan asked the man about the men on the rooftop.

The SWAT commander shrugged and instead asked, "This your guy?"

Donovan nodded. "Cody this is Alan Mitkin, Alan, Cody. Usually my tech-op, but…"

"Pleased to meet you, Cody," the man held out his hand and Cody took it in a firm handshake.

"Sure," he said.

"You've been briefed, I hope." When he nodded the commander continued, "Good. It's going to be tougher than we originally thought. You okay with that?"

Cody exchanged a glance with Donovan.

The commander continued, "If you're not—"

His cool finally snapped. "I'm _fine_!" he knew he sounded far from fine. He knew he sounded irritated – well that was just as well because right at that moment he _felt _irritated, "Would everyone please _stop!_ Stop assuming that just because I spend the majority of my time sitting in front of that computer—" He ended up pointed at his usual seat without even looking to see if it was the right place.

"No one is assuming anything, Cody," Donovan interrupted smoothly.

He sighed and turned his attention back to the commander to ask, "So it's more difficult. What's changed, aside from the additional personnel?"

"The additional personnel mean you're going to have to go in through the main entrance rather than the rear stairwell as we'd originally intended. Anything else will arouse too much suspicion," the commander said.

"And I'm to get past internal security how?" Cody turned to his boss and added, "You know… you wanted covert, you could just have given me the chance to plan this myself. The system in there is—"

"We're well aware of that," Donovan interrupted, "but it won't be an issue. You'll be given a diversion. Just… slip through in the cover."

"What cover?" he asked.

"We're calling in a bomb threat," the SWAT commander said.

Cody threw up his arms, on edge this was getting close to the last straw. "And leave me fighting through people trying to get _out_." Again he rounded on Frank, "Donovan… eight minutes… four hundred and eighty seconds… doesn't leave me long to hack into the system, find Alex, contact Jake…"

"Leave Jake to us," Donovan told him. "Alex is your priority now."

"Find your agent, download your files and get out," the commander repeated.

After a moment he nodded, taking a deep breath to try and compose himself. He jumped when a knock came at the doors of the van.

"That's your cue," Donovan said, handing him a vest. "Quick as you can."

Still breathing deeply all the while, he changed quickly into the white coveralls, the vest beneath them. It felt bulky and obvious to him… uncomfortable… but better than going in without.

"Okay," he said at last, tilting his head to settle the tiny earpiece into place after Monica had gently inserted it. "Let's do this thing."

**SHERATON HOTEL: 1.07pm**

Jake delivered another elbow-smash to Max's temple and finally felt the man go limp beneath him… stunned but not unconscious. He raised himself enough to turn the man onto his stomach and pin his arms behind him and was just reaching for the man's lost gun when the door exploded inward.

"Federal Agent!" he yelled as the police also yelled at him.

"On your knees, hands behind your head!"

He obeyed, of course he did, but added, "My wallet, back pocket… check my ID. I'm a Federal Agent."

While his partner covered him, one of the police officers reached into Jake's back pocket and pulled out his ID. After only a moment he handed it back and helped him to his feet. "Sorry, Agent Shaw," he said.

Jake shook his head, understanding and not having time to stand around debating the finer points of police procedure. "Cuff this guy and then clear the hotel. There's a holdall in the closet filled with C4 on a rigged detonator. You might want to call the bomb squad."

"_You_ might want to get yourself across town," the officer answered, "Or at least call your SAC. SWAT was just given a standby on a takedown to get an agent by your name out of Nova-Lucas Technologies."

Without thanking the officer, Jake set off at a run, pulling out his cell phone as he went.

**NOVA-LUCAS TECHNOLOGIES: 1.15pm**

"Okay," Cody said quietly to himself as he pulled open the heavy front door of the office building, "Call me paranoid, but… tell me you guys are hearing me okay?"

"_We're right with you, Cody. Just keep your head. You know the schematics._" Donovan's voice sounded in his ear, and for the first time he started to appreciate how Jake and Alex must feel.

He didn't have time to ponder it further, because he reached the front desk and the receptionist, a bored looking man in glasses and an tie that didn't really go with the shirt he was wearing asked, "May I help you, sir?"

He pulled off his clipped-on ID and tossed it onto the high reception desk for the man to pick up and examine as he said, "We were told they had a problem and they sent me. Servers at this time of the day is _not_ my idea of a good time."

The man checked his list and looked up at him with a frown. "They haven't left any—"

With an irritated sigh, Cody snatched back the ID. "Fine!" he said, "I'll just go back to the office and let you wait until it falls over completely and—"

The man evidently understood the implications of this and said quickly. "No… no… It's all right… um… top floor and—"

"Thank you," He took the elevator key the man handed to him. "I know where it is."

As he turned around, he made sure the camera in the case got a good look at the lobby and then he headed for the elevator. Once inside he breathed a sigh of relief and slumped against the wall.

"_Easy, Cody,_" Monica's voice in his ear sounded more than welcome in that moment, "_You're doing just great._"

Before long the doors slid open, giving him a good view of the mess of people between him and his destination. Many of them were obviously the 'hired help.'

"Donovan…" he hissed.

"_Making the call now, standby._"

He knew that if he didn't move he'd start to look suspicious, so trying to look as though he was exactly where he was supposed to be, he started down the corridor. His eyes actually filled with tears when the alarms started to sound… a coded ring… one long, one short.

Technicians in booths, secretaries in glass offices and the goons on the floor all started to exchange confused, then worried glances. Some reached into drawers and lockers to snatch up purses and bags, but it wasn't long before Cody found himself brushing past people all moving in the opposite direction than he was heading.

It was chaotic… almost frantic as everyone scurried ant-like toward the nearest stairwell, and under cover of the confusion cause by workers who obviously were way overdue for any kind of evacuation drill, he slipped easily in to the main computer room and stopped, calmed by the air conditioned cool and carefully designed acoustic quiet. From where he stood he had a good view of the security booth, surrounded by the banks of monitors. His calm evaporated in a second.

"Oh shit!" he gasped.

**U/C OPERATIONS VAN: 1.35pm**

"Talk to me, Cody," Frank leaned toward the monitor, trying to see if the camera in the case would show him what had so alarmed his agent.

"_That contingency plan you assured me you have? You better—_"

The monitors showed him nothing. "I said _talk_ to me. What's wrong?"

"_Alex is on the roof… there are two – no three men with her. She looks hurt._"

The image on his screen suddenly twisted and spun before settling again into a clear view of the bank of monitors. It showed him exactly what Cody had seen. He leaned closer again, and then nodded to himself.

"_You getting this?_" Cody asked, then added, "_No sign of Jake._"

"I see it," he said. "And Jake's all right. He was outside. He's on his way here now."

Cody breathed a sigh of relief. "_'kay._"

"Cody, Listen to me," Donovan said urgently, "We need that data to bring this down. You've found Alex. You _have_ to get us that data."

"_You can't leave Al—_"

"I don't intend to." Frank assured him, getting up from the chair and starting to strap on a vest. "The data, Cody."

**NOVA-LUCAS TECHNOLOGIES: 1.43pm**

The security of the familiar swept over him as he looked around for the terminal computer. "I'm on it," he said. "Just get to Alex… somehow."

Without waiting for an answer, he quickly crossed the room to the workstation and opened the case to take out the peripherals he would need, pulling the computer's casing and quickly attaching leads and patches where he needed to, before sitting at the keyboard, and letting his fingers fairly fly over the keys.

He knew the kind of security subroutines to expect and as he started working, concentrating on the task in hand, what remained of the fear he'd felt and the distractions of everything going on around him faded into insignificance. This was his demesne… he was king here… master…

His decryption key cycled through millions and millions of ciphers per second, trying the combinations to get him past encryption and password protection alike. He almost chuckled as the thought occurred to him that it would probably take him longer to download the data itself that it would to break through the security measures.

At last the screen cleared from the blank terminal screen he'd been seeing for so long and presented him with the admin screen. He took a Microkey from its safety case and slipped it into the writer, keying the instructions to dump the entire contents of the drive onto the key… and then he sat… and waited…

Ten per cent… fifteen… twenty…

"Come on… come on…" he urged the computer.

Thirty-five… forty… forty-five…

The soft click that came from behind him was the loudest sound he'd ever heard. He knew in an instant what it was and without hesitation he threw himself from the chair, pushing it backwards as he rolled to the side.

"SWAT Go!" he yelled as he rolled, drawing his weapon and putting a table that afforded only insignificant cover between him and the man he could now see was momentarily distracted by the chair. "I'm compromised. Go!"

Before the man could recover his balance and find him to take aim again, Cody let off a couple of shots, almost blind, forcing the man back… forcing him to take cover. He risked a glance at the computer screen…

Seventy percent… seventy five… eighty…

Heat grazed his right cheek and he threw himself aside again as the second shot missed him by millimetres. For a moment his vision blurred as he hit his head against the corner of the server housing… he fired blind in the direction he thought the man had taken, until the trickle of blood from the side of his head ran into his eye and he squeezed his eyes closed for a second, and wiped the side of his face with the back of his hand.

Another shot came his way, and he ducked low. He had to change the clip in his weapon and his spare was still in the case. Cursing himself for a fool he reached up for an alternate projectile. Committing the ultimate sacrilege he pulled out one of the server blades and hurled it hard in the man's direction. He scrambled to his feet, and pulled out a second, throwing that too as he sprinted for the case, flicking the switch that would eject the clip from the butt of his gun. When he reached the case he dived into a roll, snatching up the spare clip, and fitting it into his gun mid-roll. Slapping it home he pulled back on the top casing of the gun, ignoring the pain as the hot metal burned the palm of his hand, needing to be sure he had one in the chamber when he completed the roll.

As he came to his knees, he came up firing. One shot, and then a second. He heard the crash as his attacker went down. Cautiously he rounded the metal cabinet that had been between him and the man before he'd rolled across the room. The man was down, bleeding from a wound to his chest and another in his shoulder. Carefully he retrieved the fallen man's gun before returning to the computer as it bleeped in readiness.

As he walked across the room again, he caught sight of the monitors. They were dragging Alex toward the stairwell… back into the building… and all around them both; all bloody hell was breaking loose.

**U/C OPERATIONS VAN: 1.51pm**

"I'm going out," Donovan said urgently, snatching up his weapon.

Monica followed him to the door of the van. "Donovan, wait!" she called, but he didn't stop.

A car screeched to a halt at the end of the alley, and Jake leaped from it, she called to him urgently.

"What's going on?" he asked, frowning at her

"Cody's pinned down inside and Alex's cover is dead. Three perps have her up on the roof… and Donovan just went in behind SWAT."

"I'll go after him," he said and started to turn.

"Jake," she tried to stop him, "vest."

"No time," he called back and sprinted off after Donovan.

**NOVA-LUCAS TECHNOLOGIES: 1.52pm**

"Relax," Nova told his visitor, "this is the most secure room in the whole compound. From here we can watch this entire drama unfold and then wait for my men to come and give us the all clear."

"And if they don't?" the other man asked.

"Oh they will," Nova assured him with a smile. He flipped a switch on the desktop and the video screen changed to show a view of the manufacturing wing of the building, to where a group of ten men in coveralls were taking automatic weapons from an unmarked crate. "Because Mr Donovan and his team, and of course you, my dear friend, had no idea about my reinforcements."

* * *

He watched the monitors in mounting horror as the men started up the stairwell from the manufacturing floor toward where SWAT were abseiling in through upper story windows… and caught right in the middle were the men holding Alex captive.

He hadn't intended heroics, but there was nothing left open to him. He had to head them off, stop them from walking into the nightmare coming in. If he didn't, there would be a mess… a _bloody_ mess.

Taking a look around him, and making sure he pocketed the Microkey somewhere safe, he sprinted in the direction of the stairs.

* * *

Donovan hit the front doors at full tilt, almost breaking them as he ran to take the stairs two at a time. He heard footsteps behind him, but didn't turn. He didn't have _time _to deal with whoever it was behind him… and they weren't shooting at him so they weren't a threat. He had to get to the conference room… and trust in the retrieval team to get to Alex.

A body slammed into him, driving him into the wall. He raised his fist, ready to strike out, but stopped as he saw Jake, his arm across the top of his chest, using his entire stocky frame to keep him in place.

"What the hell are you doing?" Jake demanded, out of breath. "You're breaking protocol."

"You can't follow protocol when the men you're after practically _wrote_ it, Jake. Trust me," he said.

The pressure against his chest abated as Jake eased away from him and let him stand away from the wall.

"All right," Jake nodded. "I've got your back."

"No," Donovan said firmly. "Alex and Cody need you."

Before Jake could argue with him he pushed him in the direction of the stairs, and set off down the corridor toward the conference room.

* * *

Cody burst from the stairwell into a large office space and sprinted for the other stairs. As he neared the door it opened and he all but ran into one of the three men, the other two dragging Alex between them.

Her face was bloodied and bruised, her left eye swollen almost closed. Her lips were cracked and dry, and blood trickled from one corner of her mouth as though she had bitten her tongue.

Almost on automatic Cody held up his ID in his free hand and ordered as commandingly as he could, "Federal Agent! Let her go!"

One of the men holding on to Alex thrust his gun under her chin and forced her head back. "I don't think so…" he said.

Alex moaned at the movement and murmured, "Cody…?"

"Right here, Alex," he told her as an almost fatalistic calm descended over him. "You're going to be fine."

The two men holding Alex exchanged glances and chucked between themselves. "Don't you just love optimism?" one of them said, pressing his gun against Alex's side. Her breath caught. It obviously hurt.

"Don't," Cody said, shifting his aim between each of the men. Three against one, it occurred to him that this wasn't the smartest thing he'd ever done. "Let her go. Let her go and step away. This doesn't have to _be_ like this."

"And what?" the man in front wanted to know, "Let you take us in?"

Mentally he was counting down the time he'd estimated it would take SWAT and Nova's gunmen to meet up, and it was running out. He spoke urgently, "Listen to me… any second now SWAT is _right_ here… they aren't going to give you the benefit of the—"

"Oh we're so grateful, Mr Fed." The sarcasm in the man's voice was heavy but Cody didn't let it stop him and he continued as though the other man hadn't interrupted.

"Just let Alex walk over to me and—"

The next interruption was not one that he could ignore.

The door behind the men burst open and a full team of SWAT officers poured through like ants from a nest, yelling for the men to surrender; to drop their weapons… and hardly a second later, the opposite stairwell door flew into the room, scattering those now faced off as the men Cody had seen on the security monitor stormed through the doorway in its wake.

He'd never afterward work out who it was that fired the first shot, but it didn't matter. Someone did, and suddenly the room was a confusion of light and noise. People dived for what cover the desks and other furniture could provide and Alex, pushed into the deadly no man's land between the opposing forces as her captors also sought cover, stood… dazed.

* * *

Guerrilla tactics had lured the men guarding the door around the corner of the hallway and into his waiting ambush. He'd had no choice but to kill the last of them. He'd fought back too much and in the end it came to a choice between that drastic measure and alerting the men inside the conference room at the end of the hallway to his presence. He didn't want to do that. He needed surprise to be on his side.

Carefully he inserted the key-card into the slot beside the doorway and then taking a deep breath, kicked hard against the oak door.

As the door swung back and slammed against the wall he surged through and took in the room at a single glance. Just the two men inside. He squeezed the trigger and his weapon retorted, letting off a single round that took Nova in the shoulder as he was only half way out of his chair. Incapacitated, he fell backwards to the thickly carpeted floor, but Donovan had already turned his attention to the other man, shifting his aim immediately. He was completely unsurprised to see himself staring down the barrel of a gun.

"Put it down, Leggett," he demanded, "It's over."

"What are you going to do, Frank? Shoot me?" Leggett asked mildly, beginning to move and keep the conference table between the two of them, as he advanced further into the room.

"If you leave me no choice, Niall, I _will _shoot you," he said, "and I'll kill you."

"You won't kill _me_," his former supervising agent in the CIA told him steadily. "We're brothers, you and me."

Frank shook his head. "No. Not even close. I never target the innocent to get to the ones I need. You never got that did you?" He started to circle the other way, giving Leggett no opportunity to get closer to the door, although no small part of him wanted the other man to try and flee. "Not even through all the questionable acts you left me vulnerable and open to do, there was _never_ anyone innocent deliberately hurt at my hands. Is that what this is about? Professional jealousy…? You somehow feeling threatened that I can still walk with one foot either side of the line and never fall into hell?"

"You flatter yourself, Donovan." Leggett almost sneered the words, "and you're wrong. I never hurt anyone innocent either."

"So Agent Faulkner is guilty by association, is that it? So what about Agent Pennerton?"

For just a moment Leggett's face showed surprise, and then a grudging respect. "I must commend you and your agents on their excellent investigative skills," he said, "but yes, being who they are, doing what they do does rather exempt them from being innocent, don't you think? After all, you executed enough Eastern Europeans simply for being involved in their terrorist cells."

"It's not the same," Frank said calmly, staring down the side of the table again towards Leggett, refusing to be baited by his words. "Those men joined those organisations only to cause harm."

Leggett shrugged, "We could argue philosophy all day, Frank. But I don't think that's what you want, is it?" Donovan said nothing. "You want to know why, don't you?"

"She was my _wife,_" he growled.

"Yes she was." Leggett gave him an almost sad smile, "I'm very sorry for your loss."

Donovan's arm shook slightly and he resettled the gun in his hand, allowing the grief to show on his face and in his voice as he accused, "You had her killed."

"Yes I did," Leggett said, "but that doesn't change that fact that I _am_ sorry for your loss. You're a lesser man without her."

Frank's finger started to tighten against the trigger at the other man's words, but he opened his hand and stretched his fingers, refusing to give in to the urge to simply take vengeance. That _would_ make him a lesser man.

"And 'Thea?" he asked instead.

"An unfortunate accident."

Donovan shook his head, "Not what the ME said." He closed his eyes for a moment to banish the memory of the doctor's words. _…twisted upwards and to the side…_

"I'm sorry," Leggett tilted his head to the side a little, "I was not privy to the medical examiner's report."

"You surprise me," Frank's voice was thick with emotion, "you made yourself privy to just about everything else."

"How else was I to protect my investment?"

The words caught a hold of the investigator inside the grieving man he was in danger of surrendering himself to be, and Donovan took a deep breath. When he spoke again, his voice was calm.

"It's _over_, Niall. Put down the gun."

Face to face at the end of the conference table, Frank Donovan stared into Niall Leggett's eyes. He saw the cold, calculating and hardened criminal that the agent hid behind the Company mask, entrenched and irredeemable. He saw the strength of the man's convictions, wrong though they were, that matched his own, and wondered how he had ever missed what had obviously been a part of the other man for a long time. Had he been trying to groom him to follow in his footsteps, with everything he'd ordered him to do… to be…?

Leggett moved suddenly, stepping forward he smashed his forearm across Donovan's face, momentarily stunning him and following up with an upper cut to his diaphragm which drove him to his knees, winded and gasping for breath.

The rogue CIA agent leaned down and grabbed a handful of his short hair to pull his head to the side, before he leaned down to whisper to him coldly confidential.

"_Now_, it's over… _Ivan,_" he said. Then he pushed him, hard, to fall back against the leg of the conference table.

He lay there for a moment, winded and dazed, watching as Niall Leggett walked slowly down the length of the room toward the door. With an effort that was more than monumental, Frank Donovan pulled himself to his feet… staring at the man's retreating back.

His hands were by his sides, his gun held loosely. Leggett had never been more wrong… whatever he thought, whatever he imagined, Frank was no more Ivan now than he ever had been. Ivan was a mask, a cover persona created out of the nightmare of his childhood nothing more, and certainly not a part of him now. As if in proof of this, he called the other man's name.

Leggett turned, almost in the doorway and then surprise registered on his face as the sound of a gunshot split the silence. He fell to his knees, and then to the side, a single bullet wound in the centre of his forehead.

* * *

Crouching beside the booth, Cody watched the horror unfolding almost in slow motion in front of his eyes. He could almost _feel_ his breath moving in and out of his lungs. A volley of bullets splintered the wood near his head and he was forced to pull further back behind the shelter, but even as he did he couldn't tear his eyes away from Alex... his friend… a fellow team member… they watch each other's backs…

From the corner of his eyes he saw a dark blur fly through the door behind Nova's gunmen, but even then the first of the bullets flying between the two groups of men hit Alex, spinning her around. Somewhere inside, he registered surprise that it had taken this long before she had been hit, but the surprise faded quickly in the wake of the knowledge that he had to do something, as more of the bullets hit her and she almost stuttered on the spot.

It was only a couple of steps. All he had to do was make her hit the deck, it should be easy… and the vest would give him a few seconds, Donovan had said so.

Taking a huge breath and taking hold of the side of the booth for leverage, to give him a start, he called her name as he launched himself toward her.

"Cody, NO!" he somehow heard Jake's voice amid the noise, and vaguely registered the higher pitch of the Sig amid the sound of the gunfire.

As he sprinted the few steps through the open ground of the battlefield he could feel the steady punch… punch… punch of the automatic rounds hitting the vest… could probably have counted them as they stole his breath little by little with their relentless pounding.

He'd almost reached her… almost… when searing pain erupted in the left side of his body, front and back. He started to fall, his legs giving way as what was left of his breath flew from him in the cry of pain as a white heat felt as though it had severed his left arm. He tried to force himself onward, but as he fell his body connected with Alex' and the momentum carried them both to the ground. Refusing to let go of consciousness he moved to cover Alex and in spite of the added pain it caused him, wrapped his arms around his head as the battle continued over and around them.

It was an age of chaos, and noise… of the terror of being pinned, unable to move in his need to protect his team-mate, but every age has an end and at the end all descended into momentary silence.

"Cody!" Jake's voice was the first to split the smoky stillness around them.

"I'm okay," he gasped, forcing himself to sit up, ignoring every pain he felt in his determination to help Alex. His hand trembled as he reached for the side of her neck, to feel nothing. Shaking his head in disbelief he tried again and growled, "Don't you _do_ this to me."

Amid the shouts of 'clear' from the SWAT team, he heard Jake's voice crying out, "Agent down!" but still he dragged himself to Alex' side; A. B. C…

The pain was almost unbearable in the whole of his left side, and he began to feel light headed as he began chest compression, and leaned down to give her what precious breath of his he could snatch between movements. Carried on adrenaline, one cycle… two… three…

Something in him registered Donovan's arrival… knew that the man was at his side and tugging at his shoulder… there were others too, hovering nearby.

"Cody," Frank's voice was quiet, "Cody, it's over…"

"No!" he shook his head in denial and tried to push him away with his body, keep up the compressions…

Arms came around him, and he felt himself pulled back against the warmth of a body. Why was he so cold…? He struggled to stay with Alex… couldn't leave her…

"Cody… stop. Stop!"

He was pushed down to the ground, and struggled with them, fought until he had nothing left to fight with as the adrenaline faded, and defeated he finally stopped. Blue and white clad figures moved to his side… he turned his head… there were others by Alex. EMTs… working on her with lines and bags and…

"I'm okay…." He protested weakly, "I'm okay."

He saw Donovan shake his head. "They're taking you in, Cody."

"Jake?" he breathed the question.

"Right here, buddy." He felt a warm hand take his own. "Try not to move any more, hmm?"

As if suddenly remembering… he freed his hand from Jake's and reached into his pocket. When he brought his hand out again, he pressed the Microkey into Donovan's hand. Then suddenly exhausted he didn't fight as Jake once more took his hand when they lifted him onto a stretcher.

**UNSPECIFIED LOCATION – SOUTH AMERICA: 10.45pm**

He turned at the sound of the measured footsteps coming into the room and frowned in puzzlement as his retained held out the silver tray that bore a single folded sheet of paper.

"What is this?" he asked.

"I received the call a moment ago," the man said. "I'm so sorry sir."

Frowning even more deeply he picked up the solitary piece of paper and read the words, not once, but several times as he sank into the nearby chair.

**RESIDENCE – CODY FAULKNER: 11.03pm**

Cody heard the sound of the television click off as he turned the key in the lock and let himself in and stood leaning against the door, breathing in the slight smell of the fresh paint, and staring at the man that looked up at him from the couch.

His dark hair was damp, and his tanned skin, in places, still specked with water above the towel that was wrapped around his waist. Cody breathed out and closed his eyes against the tears that were gathering behind his eyelids. Then he pursed his lips to stop the lower one from trembling.

"Code?" Land said softly, a greeting and question all in one, using the nickname that had become so special to him.

"Hey…" he greeted the man, little more than a breath really as he advanced to the middle of the room and swallowed hard, feeling lost.

"God, I'm so glad it wasn't you," the words burst from the other man as he got up and crossed to take him into his arms and just hold him – not even particularly careful of the injured side of his body. Holding him tightly, just as he needed to be held.

"God, Land…!" he clung to him, breathing in the clean scent, knowing that he'd stand there as long as he needed him to. After a while he said, "I'm sorry."

Land suddenly pushed him back to arms length, looking him square in the face and said, "Absolutely not. Don't you _ever_ apologise to me for coming home."

Cody trembled as he said, "I said I'd be okay…"

"Yeah, and mostly you're all in one piece… on the _outside,_" Land answered, breathing out as a glassy tick… tick… tick… sounded from the table. Part of Cody wondered what was making the sound, but he was tired, and he hurt like hell. At Land's words he reached up to touch the four tape stitches that closed the gash on the side of his head, and tried to settle the sling that supported his injured left arm and shoulder more comfortably around his neck.

"Yeah…" he leaned his head down onto Land's shoulder. "Mostly. You okay?"

"Well, I'd like to know—" he stopped, shook his head and started again. "Yeah, I'm okay. Had a scare… and a fight with a pissy paint can, but yeah."

Cody pulled away a little to look his boyfriend over in worry, "You're hurt?" he started doing a visual check… knowing the reaction was over the top, but not able to help himself.

"No. _You're _hurt. I'm fine."

Cody took hold of his hand as he felt it brush against his fingers. Then he remembered something that Land had said a moment ago and asked, "What do you want to know?"

Land led him by the hand across toward the couch. "Forget that," he said sitting down and tugging on his hand to get him to do the same, "Now… sit…"

Cody did. He felt too far away standing as he was. He sat down and fit himself into the waiting arms, almost burrowing into them, breathing slowly, only blinking every so often, hardly aware of the ticking sound that had begun again. Eventually he just breathed Land's name… feeling the man was his lifeline.

Gentle fingers ran through his hair, just once and very lightly, and then passed gently over the hale and whole side of his body. He sighed at the touch. It felt so good… grounding…

"I'm okay," he said again, feeling Land's worry in the way he then hesitated in repeating the caress over the left side of his body. "Mostly flesh wounds and bruises. Slug went right through my shoulder, and they had to take the one out of my arm, but otherwise…"

His voice trailed off and he looked up at Land who suddenly took a deep breath.

"I was painting," he said. "Had on the news and suddenly everything felt so crazy. Somehow I _knew_ and couldn't think of any way to check on you. So I went about setting everything up like you were coming home, like you do every day. Finished painting, showered, never even bothered to get dressed 'cause I was gonna meet you right here and force the couch on you by telling you we had a little one to worry about now."

Cody took a breath, his eyes filling with tears again to think that Land had to suffer that. "I'm okay," he breathed, and then as the words caught up and made sense in his addled mind he frowned, "Little one?"

Land smiled and nodded over at where he'd left a bowl, a notelet folded beside it. "Yeah… a beautiful baby boy."

Cody followed the direction of his nod and saw the beautiful, deep blue beta fish swimming around in the water occasionally tapping its nose against the side of the glass to make a the ticking sound he'd heard. He couldn't help smiling, "Oh wow!"

Land chuckled. "Well like I said on the card, they didn't have any elephants. I asked though."

Cody leaned his head on his good hand, shaking it in amusement before he remembered why he wasn't going to do that and said to himself in an almost admonishing tone, "Ow."

"I figure Eric and Cody can eventually—" Land stopped himself, shaking his head then he added, "Well I keep Cody by my computer, so I figured something of me could go here too. Somehow naming a fish Land was just wrong."

Cody looked up at Land again and couldn't stop his eyes from filling with tears. Very quietly he said, "Thank you."

Land gave a little grin, "Well considering I didn't actually have to give birth to him…" he reached out and ran his left hand through Cody's hair again then wrapped it around him. "You need anything? And don't worry about your baby tonight. I've fed him already and put him to bed. He should be just fine."

"Just you," Cody said, and then sighing added, "And maybe some water to take these." He started fishing around in his pants pocket for the tub of medication and swore a little when he couldn't reach it.

"C'mon. We'll get you to bed; get you comfortable. I'll get you your water and _then_ you can have me."

Cody smiled and started to get up. As he did the room tilted slightly and started to swim around. He wondered then if he should tell Land that he had discharged himself AMA, but knew how perceptive his boyfriend was, so only leaned against him as he slipped his arm around his waist supportively and asked, "You okay?"

"Yeah… just a bit sore," Cody said and surrendered tiredly to the other man as he led him through to the bedroom and helped him to lie down after pulling the plastic sheet off the bed.

"You did amazing things in here… the whole apartment, you know?" he called through to Land as he went to the bathroom to get the water. Land came back smiling.

"It's better then, hmm?" he asked as he sat down on the bed and handed him the glass.

"It is," Cody said around the pills and water. "It's much better."

"And you don't mind the couch any more?"

Cody grinned, remembering the cure they tried for his hatred of the leather couch he'd bought at Michelle's insistence. "Suddenly it all kind of just… fits together." He set down the glass and took hold of Land's hand. "Thank you."

Land shut his eyes for a minute or two, but the gentle smile didn't leave his face and he said, "I didn't want it being a double whammy, you know? Sort of… let the past go before you deal with the future?"

"Yeah," he said and leaned his head back. Somehow Land's shoulder was there to support him. "A future sounds amazing right around now."

"What?" Land asked, moving his hand a little, "You don't have one? Everyone has a future, Code."

Cody's sigh trembled from his body and he said, "I know, I just… I thought I had her, you know?"

After a long silence, Land said softly, "Yeah."

"But they told me it was probably already too late before I even reached her."

"It was Alex?" Land's tone sounded as though he'd just put all the pieces together and was surprised and shocked.

"Yeah… caught in the crossfire between SWAT and the guys we were there to take down." He watched as Land's head dropped and he shook his head sadly, "She was my _friend_ Land. She'd saved my ass more times than I can count and the _one… time…_ the one time I have her back I let her down."

He sighed… a shuddering sigh, and leaned against Land as he just held him. He knew there was nothing anyone could say; doubted many would understand, so it was a strange kind of relief to him when he looked up into Land's eyes and found them brimming with tears.

'"I'm sorry…" he whispered, "tell me about your day."

Instead, Land asked, "Cody, you wanna know what I need?"

"Yes."

"I need to make everything easier for you. I need to snap my fingers and make it all right again… and short of sicking some kind of deep, Native American magic on the city of Chicago to bring her back, or on _you_ to make you forget… I can't. And you know, feels like shit to know that I could do something and I can't. I can only imagine how it'd feel if I couldn't do _anything._" Land paused for a moment and Cody took the time to realise he meant that even if he _could_ make him forget the pain of what had happened to Alex, he wouldn't do it because it wouldn't be right. It was part of what he was coming to love about Land. He didn't say anything. Only listened as the man continued, "So I need to listen to it all if that's gonna do you _any_ good. Who cares about fish, and paint, and cuts and every day shit? That's the same old, and I'm not gonna melt away from any of it…"

Finally, Cody spoke, turning to face Land as best he could. "Alex… we talked about it a lot just after Keller died. He was the SOG Commander before Donovan… and they were in love. He was shot in the line of…" he sighed, "like Alex. This possibility was something she lived with – we all live with – every day and it scared her half to death at the best of times. I'm just looking for someone to blame… you know? And do I blame Jake, because he was u/c with her… Donovan for not pulling the plug… no. I blame myself because it's easier than admitting that actually it was an accident. No one's fault and just one of those things that happen to people in a job like ours… and it scares me because it _could_ have been me."

Cody ran out of steam and sighed, then smiled a little as Land did, and he realised that he'd just opened up to the other man and admitted a lot of thing that he needed to hear himself say. He closed his eyes as Land leaned forward and gently kissed his forehead, linking their hands again.

After a moment or two, Cody frowned in confusion as a thought came into his head, not properly formed.

He heard and felt Land ask, "What's the question?" then Land chuckled, "You know, I think we have way too may rules in this relationship. A sentence rule; a truth rule; question rule; no sex when you're injured rule."

Cody couldn't help chuckling, knowing the last one hadn't come up yet among the many things he'd insisted was between the two of them. He knew they were his own form of defence against getting hurt again… making sure sentences got finished… always telling the truth no matter how hard… not being afraid to ask questions…

"Did I miss something?" Land asked at the chuckle.

"No. I think I did, though."

"Well there you go," Land told him as though it proved his point. "We've got too many. We should just lay it all on the line and do away with 'em."

Land made a grand gesture, his hand coming into contact with the night stand, and he winced.

"Damn, that smarts," he said.

"You want that?" Cody asked as he tried to get a hold of Land's hand to take a look at it. The other man played at trying to keep it away.

"Hey," he joked, "you should see the other guy. His innards are all over the walls."

Cody chuckled again and then examined the cut to Land's hand as he finally gave in and presented it to him. The cut was across the second and third knuckles and though it was red, and had reopened, it was not so bad.

"Want what?" Land asked.

"Do away with the 'rules.'" He said.

"And how do you propose we do that?" Land wriggled his hand away from him and went back to the bathroom. He heard water running as an accompaniment to their conversation that continued through the open doorway.

"I'm not," Cody confessed, then as a coda added, "Well particularly not the truth thing. I just wondered if you would _want_ to, not that we should or could."

Land returned to stand by the bed. "Sure, I mean…" he paused as he came to lounge beside him, "…what good is _any_ relationship with someone if you can't trust 'em; can't tell 'em stuff and give 'em sex when they're in pain?" he frowned "Oh and whatever the new one is about questions." Then he laughed, "And what good are they if you can't remember 'em?"

Cody looked up and smiled, their eyes drifting together to meet. He found himself drawn almost sleepily into the deep brown of Land's eyes. Softly he said, "And rules are only any use if people stick by them. It's by _choice_ I do all the things I do, because I _do_ trust you; because I—"

"So, we keep 'em, I guess?" Land shrugged and looked away, around the room, looking as though he was checking to see if he'd missed a spot. Cody called his name quietly and his gaze returned to his face. He thought he looked almost afraid.

"Cody… don't—" he sighed.

"Forget the freaking rules, Land," Cody said, extremely quietly, "Just don't do this. Don't _hide_ from me."

Land began to laugh… in fact he laughed so hard that the bed trembled under him. Not quite understanding, Cody let himself be taken into Land's arms, and held on just as tightly as Land was holding him.

"Code, I lie naked before you… hell, I _met_ you at the door in this state. What am I hiding?"

"Then why panic? What did you think I was going to say?"

"Who am I to tell you what you're about to say?"

Cody shook his head. He was pretty sure that Land knew _exactly_ what he had been about to say, just that he was afraid to hear him say it. They'd had that conversation very early in their relationship… weeks ago… fear of commitment, emotional ties… all that crap, but Land had committed more to him; had given him more in those last few weeks than anyone before _ever_ had… and he loved him. Cody had to admit it to himself if to no one else.

"Need anything else before we settle?" Land asked quietly.

"Did I take anything for this?" he nodded toward his arm, "I don't remember."

"Yeah, when I brought you the water. You sure they checked you out okay?"

"Yeah, they checked me out. They wanted to keep me in but…" he shrugged as best he could with one arm.

"I thought so." Land sighed a little, and his worry was plastered all over his face. "Well if you have any problems at all I'll…"

"I know you will," he said, and laid his head against Land's, "But I'm okay. It hurts, yeah… and yeah, so I'm tired, but I've had a _mother _of a day, you know?"

"I'm not even going to agree with that 'cause I can't imagine…" very gently their lips met, and Cody relaxed as the tenderness of it swept over him, his eyes closed as the kiss ended and Land said softly, "I'm here, 'kay?"

"Yeah," he said leaning into to the touch that Land was sweeping through his hair, "And I'm glad, because if you weren't—"

"I'm here," Land whispered again.

**ST. ANDREW'S CHURCH YARD: 2.30pm June 11th**

It was raining. A soft, light rain as though trying to wash away the stain of sadness that clung to the four people standing by the grave, watching as the casket was carefully lowered into the ground, accompanied by Father Michael's words.

It had been at Jake's request that father Michael had performed the funeral and no one had seen any reason to argue against it as it had been a loss to each one of them as surely as if they were all family, and to Jake the only family he'd know had been Father Michael.

Land, standing a respectful distance back, stepped forward to put a comforting arm around Cody as he first let go of his tears. Monica almost smiled as Cody leaned in to Land's side.

Donovan nodded. It was right that, after everything that had happened, Cody should have found some kind of peace at last. He glanced over at Land and inclined his head in gratitude for that. Then he sighed a little as Land reached out to put his free hand onto his shoulder.

None of them were able to hold back tears as the second, tiny casket was lowered into the ground, to rest there in the arms of her mother.

**NORTHWEST MEMORIAL HOSPITAL: 8.58pm**

Light from the hallway outside the private room cast long shadows into it as he stood in the doorway looking in. He did not move for a long time, transfixed by the slow… too slow measure of a struggling heart.

Eventually… when he could stand the sound no more he stepped into the room, quietly closed the door and crossed to stand at the side of the bed.

For almost as long as he'd stood in the doorway he remained at the bedside, immobile, watching her chest rise and fall at the behest of the ventilator before he reached down to carefully take her small hand into his.

She was cold, and so limp… lifeless… The thought struck him hard and he all but fell into the chair at the bedside, still holding her hand in one of his, and reaching up with the other to run his fingers over the bruises still showing on her cheeks; to run his fingers through her hair.

"Alex…" he whispered, "My Alex… my beautiful… Why? _Why _didn't you come with your papi…?

_Fin_


End file.
